One in four stars could have planets the size of Earth. This is the conclusion reached by a team of astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley, after studying166 starsof type G (like the Sun) and type K (orange stars less massive than our Sun), less than 80 light years away from our planet, with the help ofhawaii keck telescopes. In total they have found 22 stars with detectable planets.
? If we take100 typical stars similar to the Sun, only one or two have planets the size of Jupiter, six have planets like Neptune and 12 would have super-Earths, that is, with a mass of 3 to 10 times that of our planet ?, explains Andrew Howard, co-author of the study . As for planets similar in size to Earth, they predict that there are 23 for every 100 stars.
“What this means,” adds Howard, is that if NASA develops new techniques over the next decadeTo find planets similar to ours, you won’t have to look far? The next step is to find out how many of these planets could support life, for which it is necessary to calculate if they are in thehabitable zone, that is, at a distance from the star neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist.
“One of the goals of astronomy is to find the value of the la‘eta-Earth’ (? Earth)that is, the percentage of stars like the Sun that have an Earth, “Howard points out.” This is a first estimate, and the actual number may be one in eight instead of one in four. But it is not one in every 100, and that is already great news, “he says.
