In the midst of searching for another Earth-like planet using NASA‘s Kepler spacecraft, astronomers are at least finding Earth-sized planets orbiting distant stars. According to research presented at the 221st meeting of the American Astronomical Society, the Milky Way is claimed to have no less than 17 billion planets that are roughly the size of earth.
A new analysis of the data shows that about 17% of stars have an Earth-sized planet in an orbit closer than Mercury — that’s about one in every six star systems. Since the Milky Way has about 100 billion stars, that means there are at least 17 billion Earth-sized orbs out there floating around. However, not all of them are necessarily Earth-like.
via Slash Gear
