By Brad Lendon, CNN
updated 12:39 PM EST, Tue November 5, 2013 | Filed under: Innovations

(CNN) — Ever have one of those days where you just wanna be alone, maybe have the planet to yourself?

Well, based on sheer numbers, there may be a planet just for you.

Astronomers at the University of California-Berkeley and the University of Hawaii, using data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope, estimate there are tens of billions of Earth-size, possibly habitable planets in our Milky Way galaxy.

Given that there just more than 7 billion of us on this planet, that means a planet for each of us with some spares for your picky neighbors. Or a vacation planet or two for you, maybe.

And the closest may be circling a star you can see if you look up into the heavens tonight.

“When you look up at the thousands of stars in the night sky, the nearest sun-like star with an Earth-size planet in its habitable zone is probably only 12 light years away and can be seen with the naked eye. That is amazing,” UC Berkeley graduate student Erik Petigura, the leader of the team that analyzed data from the Kepler, said in a press release.

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One in five suns has habitable world

Source BBC

Astronomers have estimated how many of the 100 billion stars in our galaxy hosts a potentially habitable planet.

Using data from Nasa’s Kepler space telescope, they argue that one in five stars like the Sun hosts an Earth-sized world located in the “habitable zone”.

This zone is the region around a star where temperatures allow for water – a key ingredient for life – to stay liquid at the surface.

The researchers have published details in the journal PNAS.

“What this means is, when you look up at the thousands of stars in the night sky, the nearest Sun-like star with an Earth-size planet in its habitable zone is probably only 12 light years away and can be seen with the naked eye,” said co-author Erik Petigura, from the University of California, Berkeley.

He added: “That is amazing.”

His UC Berkeley colleague Andrew Howard said the discovery showed that planets like our own were relatively common throughout the Milky Way galaxy.

Read further in BBC

Additional Reading

The Quran and Extraterrestrial Life