609View
57m 26sLenght
4Rating

An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet that orbits a star other than the Sun. Starting in 1988, and as of 1 October 2016, there have been 3,532 exoplanets in 2,649 planetary systems and 595 multiple planetary systems confirmed. HARPS has discovered about a hundred exoplanets while the Kepler space telescope (since 2009) has found more than two thousand. Kepler has also detected a few thousand candidate planets, of which about 11% may be false positives. On average, there is at least one planet per star, with a percentage having multiple planets. About 1 in 5 Sun-like stars have an "Earth-sized" planet in the habitable zone. Assuming there are 200 billion stars in the Milky Way, one can hypothesize that there are 11 billion potentially habitable Earth-sized planets in the Milky Way, rising to 40 billion if planets orbiting the numerous red dwarfs are included. Janet Lessin and Sasha Lessin www.aquarianradio.com