Science & Technology

One in Six Stars May Have Earth-Like Planets

Which is just super-cool

|

The Kepler Space Telescope, an observatory launched by NASA in 2009 to find Earth-like planets, has provided data that suggests there are billions of them—enough that one in six stars may have at least one orbiting it.

Out of roughly 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, a new analysis of Kepler data shows that around 17 percent of them have Earth-sized planets orbiting them, meaning there could be as many as 17 billion Earth-sized worlds.