Our solar system's not so unique
Nearly one in four stars like the sun could have Earth-size planets, according to a study of nearby solar-mass stars.
The sizes of planets around 166 nearby, sun-like stars show a clear trend: small planets outnumber larger ones. Each bar on the chart represents the percentage of planets within a specific range of masses. Astronomers extrapolated from these data to estimate that nearly one in four sun-like stars 23 percent host close-in, Earth-size planets.
"What this means," says UC Berekely astronomer Andrew Howard, "is that, as NASA develops new techniques over the next decade to find truly Earth-size planets, it won't have to look too far."
Full story at Futurity.
Photo credit: (NASA/JPL & Caltech/UC Berkeley)
