Gazing at the stars on a clear night is enough to fill anyone with awe, but few of us realize just how awesome our galaxy is. According to the scientists at Caltech, there are over 100 billion planets in the Milky Way Galaxy alone, says a Caltech news release dated Jan. 2.
The discovery occurred as scientists from Caltech analyzed the planets orbiting a star called Kepler-32 to learn more about how planets form. Kepler-32 was captured by the Kepler telescope. Although two planets previously been documented, the team verified the existence of three more planets orbiting Kepler-32.
The planets are approximately the size of earth. The orientation of the planet system allowed the team to study planet formation in detail. Because the planets are a similar size to most planets in our galaxy, the team believes the information gathered will help them understand planet formation in other galaxies.
"I usually try not to call things 'Rosetta stones,' but this is as close to a Rosetta stone as anything I've seen," John Johnson, assistant professor of planetary astronomy at Caltech and coauthor of the study, says. "It's like unlocking a language that we're trying to understand—the language of planet formation."
The team expressed their excitement over the number of planets in the Milky Way Galaxy in much the same way as we do – with awe.
"There's at least 100 billion planets in the galaxy—just our galaxy," says Johnson. "That's mind-boggling."
"It's a staggering number, if you think about it," adds Jonathan Swift, a postdoc at Caltech and lead author of the paper. "Basically there's one of these planets per star."
According to NASA Astrophysics, the Milky Way Galaxy is a spiral galaxy that contains hundreds of billions of stars. NASA scientists theorize that the center of the spiral is a supermassive black hole with equivalent mass as millions of stars.
The Caltech paper was recently accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal.
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