Over 160 bn alien planets may exist in Milky Way: Scientists

This 2011 handout photo provided by the European Southern Observatory, shows the Milky Way above the La Silla Observatory.

• Alien planets are incredibly common in our own galaxy Milky Way and it may be having as many as 160 billion planets, a six-year-long study has suggested.
• According to the study, published in the journal Nature, there are over 100 billion stars in our galaxy and each of them hosts at least 1.6 planets on average, bringing the number of likely alien worlds to more than 160 billion.
• And large numbers of these exoplanets are likely to be small and rocky, roughly like Earth, since low—mass planets appear to be much more abundant than large ones
• “This statistical study tells us that planets around stars are the rule, rather than the exception,” said study author Arnaud Cassan of the Paris Institute of Astrophysics.