…Just how many planets are there?…There could be about 23 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy, each harbouring Earth-sized planets with life-friendly temperatures on their surfaces. Twenty-three billion, give or take a few…Some studies produce numbers of Earth-sized planets closer to 17 billion…Others suggest a figure as low as 6 billion or so, but these are just the planets close to Earth in size. If we extend our reach to slightly larger worlds, the places now known as ‘super-Earths’, we’re back into the tens of billions. No matter how you slice the cosmic cake, you end up with a vast wedge of planets that we’d be happy to go and study, perhaps even land on and cautiously tiptoe about. These are mind-blowingly huge numbers…

So, given the enormity of the number of planets in the galaxy, the question Caleb Scharf tries to answer in his essay is: Are We Alone?

Image Source: theorangeco.  Quote Source: Aeon Magazine