There's no place like home. Scientists found that planet Earth is unique. No other planet among the 700 quintillion terrestrial bodies in our universe comes close.
A team of scientists from the Uppsala University in Sweden headed by astronomer Erik Zackrisson created a census of all the terrestrial exoplanets that are likely to exist across the observable universe. The team added all the known data collected by NASA's Kepler space telescope and other space probes.
There are about 700 quintillion exoplanets. Scientists have long held that there are planets out there that are similar to Earth that can potentially support life as we know it.
This theory is known as the Copernican principle, a basic physics statement that states there shouldn't be any "special" observers. This means that our Earth doesn't hold a "privileged position" in the vastness of universe.
Zackrisson and his colleagues created models of what would happen if these exoplanets possess the existing laws of physics. The team fast-forwarded the model to 13.8 billion years.
They found that planet Earth is unique in the observable universe and no other planet among the 700 quintillion stellar bodies is like our home.
"It's certainly the case that there are a lot of uncertainties in a calculation like this. Our knowledge of all of these pieces is imperfect," said co-author Andrew Benson who expressed that their findings are preliminary but can offer a scientific guess on what the universe might hold. Benson is from the California-based Carnegie Observatories.
Prior to the launch of the Spitzer and Kepler space telescopes, the scientific community knows nothing about these exoplanets. Technically, the study of exoplanets is relatively new in astronomy.
The exoplanet census gives researchers a massive collection of probable statistics that can help further analyze exoplanets and Earth's place in the universe. The research was published in The Astrophysical Journal. The study is available online on arXiv.
An earlier research found 29 exoplanets that are considered livable. The Habitable Exoplanets Catalog from the Planetary Habitability Laboratory continues to be updated with Earth-like exoplanets with any life-supporting potentials.
Photo: Kevin Gill | Flickr
