'Billions' of Stars Have Planets that Could Contain Liquid Water and Life

A new research study has determined that there are billions of the stars in the Milky Way located in the "habitable zone", where liquid water might exist, and with it, life as we know it.

Based on the results of NASA's Kepler space telescope, scientists were able to examining more than 150 exoplanetary systems with more than one planet circling its host star has been shown

Published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the new research revealed that there are thousands of planets orbiting stars in our Milky Way galaxy. Following analysis, researchers calculated that the stars in the Milky Way have one to three planets in the habitable zone.

Steffen Kjær Jacobsen is a PhD student in the research group Astrophysics and Planetary Science at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen. Jacobsen said, "In these 31 planetary systems that were close to the habitable zone, our calculations showed that there was an average of two planets in the habitable zone. According to the statistics and the indications we have, a good share of the planets in the habitable zone will be solid planets where there might be liquid water and where life could exist."

"In 124 of the planetary systems, the Titius-Bode law fit with the position of the planets as good as or better than our own solar system. Using Titus-Bode's law we tried to predict where there could be more planets further out in the planetary systems. But we only made calculations for planets where there is a good chance you can see them with the Kepler satellite," he added.

The research team is urging other researchers to look at the data from the Kepler satellite again for signs of the planetary systems they have predicted, since many of them should be observable.