eta earth

Planets, planets everywhere and on some there will be drops to drink. An interesting confluence of research occurred over the last few months, leading to: "A revised estimate of the occurrence rate of terrestrial planets in the habitable zones around Kepler M-dwarfs" by Ravi kumar Kopparapu PSU (arXiv), ApJLetters in press Bottom line: about half of low mass stars in the Solar neighbourhood are estimated to have earth size planets in their habitable zone! The implications are that habitable planets may be very common and the closest one within a few light years. We'll know for sure very…