Kepler Scientist: 'Galaxy is Rich in Earth-Like Planets' : Discovery News
Wow, is all I have to say. If I were a bigwig at NASA, I'd be fuming that one of my scientists let the beans spill at a TED conference instead of a publication.
To give an idea of the enormity of this slip, to date, only about 450 exoplanets have been discovered and confirmed. And most of those have been large, Jupiter and Saturn type planets. Now if you watch the TED talk, about 8 minutes into the tal
k, there is a slide which shows over 1000 planets discovered, and about 140 of them are Earth-like in size (2 Earth radiuses or smaller).
This suggests that our planet surely isn't alone in the galaxy, and if it is common, then so might life elsewhere.