I love living in the future.

[theweaselking]

Kepler finds 1200 extrasolar planets, 54 in the habitable zone, 5 of those Earth-mass-ish, 1 of those Earth-mass.

By looking at 156,000 stars.

And ONLY finding planets that are edge-on to the Earth.

Which is to say, if these results are at all typical, there are about a million Earth-mass habitable-zone planets that orbit edge-on to the Earth, in this galaxy alone.

I love living in the future.

Comments

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

Humanity's manifest destiny: to explore and colonize those planets!

[publius1.livejournal.com]

It's MOO2!

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I hope so.

Tiny, Toxic, Low-Gravity Ultra-Poor world, dissassembled and reassembled out of the rubble = Large, Normal-Gravity, Mineral-Normal, Gaian-environment planet.

[hollowpoint.livejournal.com]

Any excuse to bust out the Stellar Converter!

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I would sometimes *give* star systems to enemies so that I could reconquer the non-useless planet and use the Converter to blast a useless planet into dust - and then rebuild it, better, stronger, richer, from the useful planet.

[hollowpoint.livejournal.com]

From recent attempts to revisit MOO2 I have discovered that I no longer have my old expansionist knack. These days the strongest AI races outpace me on anything above normal difficulty. Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate... Expire.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

We have the technology, we can reconvert them.

[skiriki.livejournal.com]

Ye gods I hate you. :( Now I'm tempted to play MoO2 and I have no time, I have to go to work in an hour. :(

[dscotton.livejournal.com]

Where do I buy my ticket?

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

And do they give group discounts?

[dscotton.livejournal.com]

Darkfriend colony!

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Hey, that's ONE term out of the Drake equation that's nearer to getting a value plugged in.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Right, and it makes the question all the more interesting: Where is everybody?

[skiriki.livejournal.com]

Gah Lak Tus ate 'em.

Duh. NEXT!

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

No, they're coming to "explore and colonize", armed to the goddamned teeth. But in slower-than-light ships, so it might take a while.

[chrisrw109.livejournal.com]

Sadly, possibly more likely, the question is 'when' is everybody. Given that our current experimental model has only established a 'detectable' window of what 80 years?

[tyoko.livejournal.com]

Check the update to that article. He wasn't taking in to account that Kepler only sees planets that have orbits that are edge-on to the Earth. A million potentially habitable planets is a gross underestimate!

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Hence why I said "a million, counting only the ones that are edge-on"

[tyoko.livejournal.com]

Oh, botheration. I apologise for my coffee-deprived reading skills.