Potentially Habitable Planets Are Common, Study Says
Some excerpts that tie in quite nicely with David's often raised point about not knowing a whole lot about the oceans and, in this case, our own solar system.
The research, announced yesterday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, Massachusetts, is just one of a set of recent findings that suggest the roster of potential life-harboring worlds is huge—even in our own solar system.
At the briefing, scientists also advanced the possibility that our solar system contains hundreds or even thousands more dwarf planets like Pluto, hidden from view in the distant region known as the Kuiper belt.
There is a growing body of evidence that the poorly understood region contains several Earth- or Mars-size planets and many tinier bodies, said NASA planetary scientist Alan Stern, adding that this could very well be a "new Copernican revolution" in our understanding of planets.
More than half of the sunlike stars in the galaxy could have terrestrial planets with the potential to harbor life, a new study suggests.
"What we thought is, our outer solar system is actually our middle solar system,"
Link to pdf of the study.
Some excerpts that tie in quite nicely with David's often raised point about not knowing a whole lot about the oceans and, in this case, our own solar system.
The research, announced yesterday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, Massachusetts, is just one of a set of recent findings that suggest the roster of potential life-harboring worlds is huge—even in our own solar system.
At the briefing, scientists also advanced the possibility that our solar system contains hundreds or even thousands more dwarf planets like Pluto, hidden from view in the distant region known as the Kuiper belt.
There is a growing body of evidence that the poorly understood region contains several Earth- or Mars-size planets and many tinier bodies, said NASA planetary scientist Alan Stern, adding that this could very well be a "new Copernican revolution" in our understanding of planets.
More than half of the sunlike stars in the galaxy could have terrestrial planets with the potential to harbor life, a new study suggests.
"What we thought is, our outer solar system is actually our middle solar system,"
Link to pdf of the study.
