A greater number of planets could potentially allow for life than previously thought, according to research by Penn State's Ravi Kopparapu.
Kopparapu, a post-doctoral researcher in geosciences, also discusses in his analysis that some of the possibly habitable planets are in close proximity to our own nearby stars.
"We now estimate that if we were to look at ten of the nearest small stars we would find about four potentially habitable planets, give or take," Kopparapu says, adding that this number is a "conservative estimate" and that there could actually be more such planets.
The Astrophysical Journal Letters agreed to publish a paper by Kopparapu, based on his findings. The paper, as relayed by Science Daily, shows that Kopparapu has "recalculated the commonness of Earth-sized planets in the habitable zones of low-mass stars, also known as cool stars or M-dwarfs."
The rationale behind concentrating on M-dwarfs involves the fact that planets revolving around them have a short orbit. The short orbit lets researchers more easily acquire information on a greater number of orbits more quickly than the data that could be accrued from Sun-like stars, "which have larger habitable zones," Science Daily says.
Being less rare than stars like Earth's Sun also means that more M-dwarfs can be observed than other stars.
"The average distance to the nearest potentially habitable planet is about seven light years," Kopparapu says. "That is about half the distance of previous estimates. There are about eight cool stars within ten light-years, so conservatively, we should expect to find about three Earth-size planets in the habitable zones."
Kopparapu's larger number of potentially habitable planets stems from his having employed a model that he and his team updated from previous studies. The update itself comes from Kopparapu's utilization of data on water and carbon dioxide absorption and had not been known previously.
"This means Earth-sized planets are more common than we thought, and that is a good sign for detecting extraterrestrial life," Kopparapu says.
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