’ETs highly probable in Milky Way with many planets’

Scientists have discovered that the number of planets is far more than that of stars in the Milky Way, where Earth belongs to, according to a British science journal, Nature, on Wednesday.

In observations of millions of stars in the center of the Milky Way over the past six years, astronomers calculated that a star has 1.6 plants on average. The research was conducted by an international team led by Daniel Kubas, a professor at the Institute of Astrophysics in Paris and his colleague Arnaud Cassan.

This means that there are not a few plants similar with Earth in the environment, which enhances the possibility that extraterrestrial life exists.

There are at least 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. There were no planets found outside our solar system until 1994. However, scientists have found a growing number of planets since then thanks to the rapid development of sophisticated telescopes.

The team gained the outcome, observing stars 3,000 to 25,000 light years away from Earth with “gravitational microlensing,” which shows light bending due to gravity in the course of travel to Earth from far away.

Two thirds of stars have planets with gravity five times Earth and half of them have Neptune-class planets with the mass 17 times Earth

"One can point at almost any random star and say there are planets orbiting that star," said astronomer Uffe Grae Jorgensen, of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, a member of Dr. Cassan's team.

"We are now facing the idea that planets are all over the place," said astrophysicist John Southworth at the U.K.'s Keele University, who wasn't part of these research projects.

“Scientists are inspired by the new discovery, which means we will have better chance of directing antennas to the right direction of the universe to find other forms of life.” Professor Dan Watthaymor from the University of California said