Thursday, February 25, 2016

700 quintillion planets

Earth May Be a 1-in-700-Quintillion Kind of Place

By Nathaniel Scharping | February 22, 2016 5:39 pm

galaxiesA Hubble image that captures a small sampling of the galaxies within the universe. (Credit: NASA/ESA)
A new study suggests that there are around 700 quintillion planets in the universe, but only one like Earth. It’s a revelation that’s both beautiful and terrifying at the same time.
Astrophysicist Erik Zackrisson from Uppsala University in Sweden arrived at this staggering figure — a 7 followed by 20 zeros  — with the aid of a computer model that simulated the universe’s evolution following the Big Bang. Zackrisson’s model combined information about known exoplanets with our understanding of the early universe and the laws of physics to recreate the past 13.8 billion years./.../

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