Are we alone? Study hints at 300 mn habitable worlds in Milky Way galaxy

Before Nasa retired the Kepler space telescope in 2018, nine years of the telescope's observations revealed that there were billions of planets in our galaxy

At a time when we are looking for answers to the ultimate question – are we alone – and there is a widening space race amid the discovery of water on the Moon and parts of Mars, a new observation has piqued the interest of the astronomical community by suggesting that there could be nearly 300 million potentially habitable worlds within our galaxy.

A new research, published in The Astronomical Journal, observes that “half the stars similar in temperature to our Sun could have a rocky planet capable of supporting liquid water on its surface”.