As the accoutrements for research grow in scope and scale, scientists are realizing that an Earth-like planet may not be so rare as once thought. A new study out of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) states that the closest one may be a mere 13 light-years away.
"We thought we would have to search vast distances to find an Earth-like planet. Now we realize another Earth is probably in our own backyard, waiting to be spotted," said lead author of the study Courtney Dressing from the CfA.
The astronomers utilized public data from the NASA Kepler telescope to determine that approximately six percent of all red dwarfs could contain Earth-like planets that could be habitable. Red dwarfs are the most common kind of star in our Milky Way and what this translates to after some fancy math is that there could be a habitable planet 13 light-years away, which is a hop, skip, and a step away in the grand cosmic scheme of things.
The NASA Kepler's mission to search for habitable planets throughout the cosmos.
Government space agency NASA states that 17 percent of stars are believed to have an Earth-sized planet orbiting them closer than Mercury orbits our sun. This means that there should be around 17 billion Earth-sized planets in our Milky Way alone, given that there are approximately 100 billion stars in our galaxy.
We were hit with a flurry of reports last year signaling advances in the search for an Earth-like planet, and many went on to state that 2013 should be the year the first true cousin to Earth will be found.
"I'm very positive that the first Earth twin will be discovered next year," Abel Mendez, from the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo said back in 2012.