Except in San Mateo County, sometimes it feels like Pacifica may be.
San Francisco Chronicle/Associated Press, Alicia Chang, Science writer, 1/7/13. "Study: Billions of Earth-size planets in Milky Way."
Only 17 billion Earth size planets in our own Milky Way galaxy |
.... Despite the explosion of exoplanet discoveries in recent years, one find remains elusive: A planet that's not only the right size but also in the so-called Goldilocks zone where it's not too hot or too cold for water to be in liquid form on the surface.
.... Using a different method, a team from the University of California, Berkeley and University of Hawaii
separately came up with a similar estimate. They calculated 17 percent
of distant stars have planets that are the same size as Earth or
slightly larger." Read article.
Reference definition - Bright Hub - Science, Space, Astronomy. "What are Exoplanets?" "The exact definition of an
exoplanet is just a planet, any planet, that is orbiting a star other
than our own Sun, and is therefore not in our Solar System. That's it.
Nothing fancy about it. “Exoplanet” is just sort of “extrasolar planet”,
which would be self explanatory if astronomers hadn't saved some space
by shortening the term by two syllables."
Posted by Kathy Meeh
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