Tens of billions of habitable planets in our galaxy

The department of "planet hunters" to NASA has doubled this estimate, taking into account recent studies on planets with high cloud cover ...

If humanity is ever to move, it will be spoiled for choice. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, in fact, harboring more than 60 billion habitable exoplanets. The Kepler Spacecraft, NASA department responsible for referencing habitable planets has published a new study.

>> Hunting habitable planets is here in pictures

Until now, the scientific community believed that each solar system, around-called "red dwarf" (less bright than our Sun) stars, housed on average a habitable planet. But this new study twice the estimate, whereas some planets with atmospheres cloud can also accommodate extra terrestrial life forms.

Under the clouds, life

"The clouds cause both warming and cooling of the Earth, says Dorian Abbot, professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago. They reflect sunlight and so cool the atmosphere and cause a greenhouse heating. This balance is largely allowing a planet to host life. "

For the record, a planet is considered habitable when the temperature allows water in the liquid state, and is therefore neither too far nor too close to the star.

Between light and shadow, life as

In this new study, researchers have developed a simulation system that allows for what are potentially habitable planets according to their apparent cloud cover.

Even some planets that constantly show the same face to their star could have a habitable zone on the border between sunny and not sunny hemisphere.