The Milky Way may have 6 billion terrestrial planets
According to a report by the physicist organization network on the 16th, Canadian scientists wrote in the latest issue of the Astronomical Journal that their calculations indicate that there are about 6 billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way. The researchers emphasized that estimating the probability of different planets appearing around different stars can provide important constraints on the theory of planet formation and evolution, and help optimize future missions aimed at finding planets.
The latest research collaborator, Michelle Guoben of the University of British Columbia (UBC) explained that if a planet is to be regarded as an earth-like planet, it must be a rocky planet, about the same size as the earth, and surrounding similar The sun's stars (https://www.wearwore.com) rotate. Moreover, the planet must be located in the habitable zone of the star. In this zone, the surface of the rocky planet can contain liquid water, so it has the potential to be suitable for life to thrive.
Guoben said: "My calculations show that the upper limit of each G-type star to have terrestrial planets is 0.18. Previously, some scientists estimated that the number of potentially habitable planets per sun-like star ranged from 0.02 to more than 1 Wait."
Another research collaborator, UBC astronomer Jamie Matthew pointed out: "The Milky Way has at most 400 billion stars, of which 7% are G-type stars, which means there may be less than 6 billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way. "
Generally, compared with other types of planets, terrestrial planets are more likely to be "missing fish" in exoplanet search missions because they are too small and far away from the star, which means that they appear in the existing exoplanet catalog The planets are only a small part of the planets around the star being searched.
In view of this, Kunimoto uses a technique called "forward modeling" to overcome the above problems. She explained: “I first simulated the total number of exoplanets around the star searched by the Kepler Space Telescope. Based on the probability of finding them with my planet search algorithm, I marked each planet as either “discovered” or “unknown”. Find'. Then, I compare the detected planets with my actual planet catalog. If the simulation results are very close, then the initial number of planets is likely to be the actual number of planets orbiting these stars."
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