Monday 24 June 2013

Exoplanets explained


Next time we're sailing over the South China Sea -- to or from the Philippines, say-- and we look up at the so-clear sky and those wondrous strings of countless stars, consider this: that each one has on average more than 3 planets, say these brainy folk...  By my rough calculation the number of planets in the universe ("conservatively" they say) is 2 x 10^25, which is 2 with 25 zeros ("2 octillions"?).  And about a third are earth-sized. How unlikely is it that there's no other life out there?
The video explains how they find "exoplanets".  The site with plenty of other fun science videos is here.