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Jon Welsh • 10 years ago

In fact (statistically speaking, of course), one hundred percent of "Sun-like stars in our solar system" have Earth-sized planets that could host life.

StarKing • 10 years ago

I might add:
The nearest sun-like star with an Earth-size planet in its habitable zone is probably only 93 million miles away and can be easily seen with the naked eye, in broad daylight no less.

Java55 • 10 years ago

Going out on a dark tangent after reading all this, one can only wonder how many small planets were ejected out of their stellar systems to become very cold orphaned planets before relative system stabilisations were achieved...

Infrared would be of little or no use in finding them and, at a distance, gravitational lensing will cloak them, and with so few photons to work with it would take a huge aperture to have any remote chance of detecting them, that is, unless one happens to pass our neck of the woods with the best odds being arriving at an angle different to the plane of our solar system.

Just putting this out there in case nobody thought to look (or say anything.)

Troy Hedges • 10 years ago

Check that 20% in our solar system reference. It may be closer to 100% ;-)