Galaxy contains billions of potentially habitable planets, say Berkeley, Hawaii astronomers

NASA's Kepler space telescope, now crippled and its four-year mission at an end, nevertheless provided enough data to complete its mission objective: to determine how many of the 200 billion stars in our galaxy have potentially habitable planets. Based on a statistical analysis of all the Kepler observations, UC Berkeley and University of Hawaii, Manoa, astronomers now estimate that one in five stars like the sun have planets about the size of Earth and a surface temperature conducive to life. Credit: Petigura/UC Berkeley, Howard/IfA, Marcy/UC Berkeley, Illumina Studios.
http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2013/1...

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