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Milky Way Galaxy May Contain 100-200 Billion Planets


In news that provides some hope that one day we might actually get off this hellbound planet to go f*** up another one, a research team led by astronomer Jonathan Swift is now estimating the Milky Way galaxy contains somewhere between 100 and 200-billion alien planets, at least one of which is capable of supporting human life without spacesuits. Get it? Earth, dummy!

How did Swift and company arrive at this conclusion? By studying the makeup of a planetary system designated Kepler-32, located about 915 light-years from Earth. The system includes five planets, all closely orbiting an M dwarf, a type of star smaller and cooler than our own sun. The planets are very similar to other exoplanets found orbiting other M dwarfs in the past, which made Swift and his colleagues suspect a trend.

About 75 percent of the Milky Way's 100 billion or so stars are M dwarfs like the one in the Kepler-32 system, and the researchers believe many of the other M dwarfs in the galaxy may also host one or more planets. Because the Kepler telescope operates by detecting when a star dims as a planet passes in front of it, it can only see planets from a certain angle, so the researchers calculated how many of the galaxy's M dwarf stars would be at the right angle to show their planets to the telescope. After all that calculation, Swift and company arrived at the 100 billion number.

Wow, if there are that many planets in our galaxy alone, imagine how many planets are in ALL the galaxies in the universe. I'm guessing at least twice that number. "You're an idiot." I SAID AT LEAST.

Thanks to Oreo Flavored Evil Ares: who's so evil when I bit into him he was actually licorice flavored. DOES YOUR EVIL KNOW NO BOUNDS?!

There are Comments.
  • st

    sweet. my chances of finding unobtainium just went up.

  • Robin Manford

    Recent estimates by some astronomers are that there could be up to 100,000 rogue (starless) planets for ever star in the Milky Way. That's about 30,000,000,000,000,000. OK, so they wouldn't have much chance of like, but still, makes 200,000,000,000 seem unimportant, really.

  • n_a_a_s

    Well I'll be long past dead before we'll know anything significant about like 10 of them so........... cool

  • GizmoDuck

    hello old friend. we meet again

  • n_a_a_s

    gizmoduck ♥

  • BillGatesIsYourDaddy

    100-200 billion planets in our galaxy alone. the universe is not even close to being charted and the estimation is already at 500 billion galaxies in the universe. how can anyone in their right mind today still believe that we are the only beings in this universe???

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