Statistic of the day
March 5th, 2009
Given that there are an estimated 100bn sunlike stars in our Milky Way galaxy and 100bn galaxies in the known universe, the potential number of Earth-like planets is a humbling 10 to the power of 22.
From the FT’s look at the Kepler space telescope and current work on exo-biology.
10^22 is a truly large number. If you’re only now getting your head around 1 trillion (as in stimulus), that’s only 10^12.
March 5th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
That’s too many.
March 5th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
That’s not saying there’s life on 10^22 planets, or even that there are 10^22 Earth-like planets. Merely that 10^22 is the potential number of Earth-like planets.