50 billion planets!

I just got this news from the Associated Press, written by Seth Borenstein. According to his article, scientists estimate that there are 50 billion planets in our Galaxy. That is a big number! Of course not all planets are in the habitable zone or the Goldilocks zone. By using the number of planets the Kepler mission discovered so far, 1,235 planets and the number of planets that are in the zone for life, 54, it is estimated that there are 500 million planets in our galaxy that could support life.

So, with that many planets that could support life, how come no one is dropping by to say hello? The simple answer is, a planet to support life is one thing, intelligent life that can conquer space travel is a different question. Yes I am a skeptic when it comes to discover another civilization, but just to discover a planet that could support life would be very exciting. It would be even more exciting if we could detect signs that may indicate that there is possible life, such as vegetation on that planet. The way technology is going, I would not be surprised that scientist will find proof of possible plant life on a distant planet in the next five to ten years.

Not sure if any of the starwatchers here in the NW went out recently, but Friday and Saturday were great evenings to go out and do some start gazing. I got this really great app called Star Walk. This is the best program. It uses the photo lens on my iPod to superimpose the real sky with the app sky. Once the app is oriented with the real sky I can pick any object and the program guides me with arrows to the right spot in the sky. I was just looking at Orion and at Gemini and found the sport where the Eskimo nebula supposedly is. This nebula is not visible with the naked eye, but just knowing where to look is really neat.