Goldilocks | Known Universe

remember the story of Goldilocks and the
three bears
she found their habitat too hot or too
hard and then just right well scientists
look at outer space in the same way some
planets are way too hot
others are too cold but some are just
right to support life as we know it
how many inhabitable planets could
really be out there we have here about a
million grains of rice and we can
imagine that each one of these grains of
rice represents a star within the Milky
Way galaxy of these millions of stars
20% have planets so here we have 200,000
grains of rice representing those stars
with planets if 10% of those stars have
small rocky planets like Earth that fly
within the Goldilocks zone that leaves
us with about 20,000 stars
scientists estimate that 1% of those
stars might actually have rocky planets
like Earth leaving us with 200 grains of
rice and now imagine that only 1% of
them actually has life on them that
leaves us with a mere two grains of rice
representing the planets that actually
harbor life but our Milky Way galaxy
contains 100 billion stars not the
million grains of rice we started with
and scaling up tells us that our Milky
Way galaxy actually contains 200,000
inhabited planets
so like Goldilocks maybe we humans will
someday find a new planet that feels
just right and move right in the
universe now you know