Kounteya Sinha, TNN | Nov 6, 2013, 06.36 AM IST
LONDON: On the historic day when India launched its first rocket to Mars to look for the presence of methane, an indicator of life, Nasa has for the first time come to the conclusion that as many as two billion planets in our galaxy may be suitable for life. The nearest, according to astronomers, could be a mere 12 light years away.
Nasa's Kepler spacecraft, now crippled and its four-year mission at an end, has provided enough data to complete its mission objective: to determine potentially habitable planets in our galaxy, the Milky Way. The findings say our galaxy probably contains at least two billion planets that, like Earth, have liquid water on their surfaces and orbit around their parent stars in the "habitable zone" for life.
Based on a statistical analysis of all the Kepler observations, astronomers from the University of California and University of Hawaii estimate that one in five stars like the sun have planets about the size of Earth and a surface temperature conducive to life.
"What this means is, when you look up at the thousands of stars in the night sky, the nearest sun-like star with an Earth-size planet in its habitable zone is probably only 12 light years away and can be seen with the naked eye. That is amazing," said Erik Petigura from UC Berkeley. However, just because a planet is the size of earth may not mean it is habitable.
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