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Asked by loulou to Colm, Eoin, Joseph, Lauren, Stephen on 12 Nov 2013.
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Joseph Roche answered on 12 Nov 2013:
Yes! Lots more. We think the ratio of planets to stars in our galaxy might be as high as one-to-one. That means there are billions of planets in our galaxy alone.
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Eoin O Colgain answered on 12 Nov 2013:
Yes, as Joe say, lots, though we probably won’t be able to visit them anytime soon.
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colm bracken answered on 13 Nov 2013:
Yes, as the other guys said, probably billions in our galaxy alone. Until 1995 we only knew of the planets in our solar system. Since the discovery of the 1st exoplanet (planet around another star) in 1995 we have discovered over 1,000 of them. Some of them are even similar to Earth so the next step is to try to measure their atmospheres to see if we can see clues to life. We are also now pointing our radio telescopes at some of them to see if any aliens are sending us messages. In fact we sent our own messages out to some of them already in the hopes of getting a response, but no luck so far!
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Lauren Mc Keown answered on 13 Nov 2013:
As the guys said, plenty! The search for exoplanets is growing every day with even lots of Earth – sized planets being found. The Kepler mission is searching for exo – planets and exo – moons and is inspecting them in surprising detail! Recently, a new type of planet other than the typical rocky terrestrial or gas/ice giants was found by Hubble. This planet (whose name is just a list of letters and numbers at the moment :p), is known as a “water world” with a very thick, steamy atmosphere, which has much more water than Earth and possibly as a result, much less rock. This environment would lead to a completely different inner composition for the planet with very high temperatures and pressures forming exotic materials like “hot ice”. So there really are plenty of planets out there with very different environments to the ones we know and it will be great for us to find out more about them in the next couple of years!
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Stephen Scully answered on 14 Nov 2013:
Yes. We have only looked at a very small part of the universe and have found 1000’s. We only started really looking 20 years ago and we are getting better at it all the time.
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