Galaxy Spotting (Photo : Reuters)
Researchers have analyzed data from NASA's Kepler satellite and found out that there may be thousands of potential other Earths in the Milky Way galaxy.
Astronomers calculated that there are at least one or three planets in the habitable zone for each of the billions of stars in Milky Way. Planets that are in the said zone might have liquid water and other basic requirements to sustain life.
The study indicated that about 1,000 planets roaming around the Milky Way's stars have the potential to be other Earths and more than 3,000 other possible life-sustaining planets.
Most of the stars have nearby planetary systems that contain up to six planets, but researchers said that there might be more than the initial number observed by the Kepler satellite, according to Earth Sky.
The Titius-Bode law, which calculated the correct position of Uranus before its discovery, was used for calculating the position of the planets by the group of researchers from the University of Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute and the Australian National University.
Discovery reported that using the 250-year-old method, the researchers found planets that were not too close nor too far from their stars in order to be in a habitable zone in the Milky Way galaxy.
"We decided to use this method to calculate the potential planetary positions in 151 planetary systems, where the Kepler satellite had found between three and six planets," said research group member Steffen Kjaer Jacobsen.
The astronomers said that their calculations were limited only to the Milky Way galaxy. If technology allowed to further venture outside the observable space, there could be thousands, if not tens of thousands, of other potential habitable planets.
