Based on data from the
Kepler Space Telescope and the
Gaia mission, there may be up to 300 million habitable planets in the Milky Way galaxy, according to a team of scientists from the SETI Institute, NASA, and other international organizations. The research not only gives a measurement of how many potentially life-bearing planets there are, it also provides a key factor in the Drake equation that estimates how many extraterrestrial civilizations may exist.
Written in 1961 by Dr. Frank Drake, the
Drake equation is the most famous formula in the search for extraterrestrial technological civilizations that could potentially communicate with Earth using radio signals. The calculation is based on a number of factors, including the rate of star formation, the fraction of stars that have planets, how many habitable planets a star has, the number of planets that develop life, the number that produce intelligent life, the number that produce a technological civilization, and the life span of that civilization.
newatlas.com