Astronomers say that each of the 100 billion stars in the Milky Way
probably has at least one companion planet. Until the first part of the
20th century, scientists believed our home galaxy was the entire
universe and, until 1994,that the planets in our solar system were the
only ones we knew. With the aid of the Kepler Spacecraft, launched in
2009, an international team of 42 scientists has been surveying millions
of stars in the Milky Way. They've discovered that planets may be as
plentiful as grains of sand on a beach, and that many stars likely host
planets with mass five times that of earth. Some stars are home to gas
giants like Jupiter. And some planets may circle not one but two
stars--a phenomenon so unlikely it was previously only considered in
science fiction. We may need to keep searching for ET, though; none of
the planets detected so far appears suitable for conventional
carbon-based life as known on Earth.
Read more here: online.wsj.com
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