It's speculative, but astronomers have been using telescopes like NASA's Kepler, and a host of other tools to try to put some flesh on the bones of Drake's list of unknowns. Each fraction gives a smaller and smaller number until we come to the final value we can use to estimate the number of intelligent civilizations like ours out there in the Milky Way.
Drake said it's about 10 a year, which gives an estimated 250-500 billion stars in the Milky Way.įrom there Drake suggested that only a tiny fraction of those stars have planets around them, and a tiny fraction of those planets might support life.
It's called the Drake equation and it's just a series of estimates that begins with a single number: how many stars are born in the Milky Way each year. More than even the most optimistic scientists could have ever hoped for.Ī bit of backstory: in 1961 radio astronomer Frank Drake showed some very speculative math to another group of scientists about how many intelligent civilizations should be hanging around in the Milky Way. He says the discovery of Proxima b adds to the mounting and 'astounding' evidence that there are a lot of earth-like planets out there. To get a better idea of what this means, VOA spoke with Alan Boss the Chair of NASA's advisory group for Exoplanet exploration. This makes Proxima b a prime candidate in the search for life beyond earth. Scientists have long thought that the keys to life are a warm, but not too warm planet, and water. It orbits its red dwarf sun every 11 days, and it's warm enough that if there is water on the planet, it can exist in liquid form.
The planet is a little larger than the Earth, and scientists have named it Proxima b. Artist's impression of the planet orbiting Proxima Centauri.