And 500 Million of them may be conducive to life!!! This is the result of the Kepler telescope they sent up into space about 1 1/2 years ago. I've been waiting for these results for a while, and I'm happy. Cosmic census finds crowd of planets in our galaxy - Yahoo! News
With all the potential solar systems out there of course there should be life. Pretty awesome that we're pursuing the knowledge .
I have always beleived that life is abundant in the universe. Unfortunately we will not be aware of even the slightest percentage of it.
"I" before "E", except after "C" (; hahaha buuuuttt, I agree. To me there is a 100% chance that there is life elsewhere in the universe.
but it also begs the question... How many scientists does it take to count 50 billion planets? And how long does it take?
Theres more stars in the universe than the amount of sand grains on earth, (A handful of sand has about 10,000 grains) Now imagine all the sand on earth
technically there could be life on every single planet, just because we need oxygen and carbon doesn't mean they do.
Considering how there are 200-400 billion stars in the Milky Way, I think there are much more than 50 billion planets here as well. Now this is a pretty large blanket statement.. But if each star (like our sun) has 9 (or 8, whatever) planets revolving around it, then that is potentially 200,000,000,000 - 400,000,000,000 x 9. That's something like 1.8e12 - 3.6e12 planets.
The best thing is, with that discovery; we know that we don't know anything about what could be out there.
I mean.. If there are 400 billion stars in the Milky Way. (I'm gonna make some pretty hefty blanket statements, so bare with me) If each one of those stars, like our sun, had 9 planets revolving around them. Then one out of those nine were habitable by humanoid lifeforms. That'd leave you with 44,444,444,444 planets capable of housing humanoids. and that's ONLY humanoid lifeforms (potentially, lol). Who knows what kind of conditions other life could survive on.