Billions of habitable planets found in our Galaxy

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has announced an interesting discovery: it seems that there are some billions of habitable planets on the Milky Way. It is probable that more than one hundred are in the vicinity of our Sun.

The investigation results presented by the ESO have been carried out by a group of professionals in charge of the HARPS. This is an espectrograph which accompanies the ESO's telescope. HARPS found a group of nine "super Earths" in a total sample of 102 red dwarfs.

What is a super Earth? To make the definition simple, it is a rocky planet whose mass is about 10 times greater. There could be a possibility that some of these contain liquid water, in the case they are in the appropriate distance to their star. The possibility that any of these may have any kind of life is not completely remote.

ESO did some extrapolations with the conclusion that some tens of billions of these super Earths could be just in our Galaxy. However, they did also say that the red dwarfs are characteristic for their X radiation emission, which a single wave can cover an entire planet. Therefore, the total number of habitable planets should be smailler.

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