[ExI] There Could Be 300 Million (or More) Earth-Like Planets in Our Galaxy

[John Grigg]

"Taking the paper’s most conservative lower bound, 7 per cent of the
galaxy’s estimated 4 billion sun-like stars
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/science/astronomy-exoplanets-kepler.html>
could have an Earth-like planet in the habitable zone. That translates to a
population of *at least* 300 million
<https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/news/1664/about-half-of-sun-like-stars-could-host-rocky-potentially-habitable-planets/>
such planets in the Milky Way. With warp drive and a map, that’s a
potentially habitable planet for every 26 people in the world. (Indeed, 4
such planets could be within 30 light years of the sun, the closest within
20 light years.)

The key word here is *potentially*.

This may be our best guess at eta-Earth yet, but as all the dependencies
should make clear, it’ll likely be a moving target for years to come.
Though the calculation narrows the bands of uncertainty, those bands are
still quite wide. Perhaps the greatest contributor to this is the fact
researchers are extrapolating from a very small population of planets."
https://singularityhub.com/2020/11/08/there-could-be-300-million-or-more-earth-like-planets-in-our-galaxy/\
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