Astronomers see that Milky Way is packed with earth-like orbs

Earthlings, we're not alone. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have located the fastest-moving, most remote planets ever observed by humans. Snip from WaPo article by Marc Kaufman:

...Based on the number of planets identified and the number of stars in the Milky Way, the scientists estimated that as many as 6 billion Jupiter-size planets exist in [our] galaxy.

"Our discovery . . . gives very strong evidence that planets are as abundant in other parts of the galaxy as they are in our solar neighborhood," Sahu said...

Link to full text. And from a NYT item by Dennis Overbye:

"...We're beginning to be able to calculate how many Earths there are, how many planets are habitable, if not inhabited..." Dr. Boss added.

Link.

The astronomers' findings were published in full today in the journal Science: Link, the full report is available only to paying subscribers. Here's a snip from the abstract:

More than 200 extrasolar planets have been discovered around relatively nearby stars, primarily through the Doppler line shifts owing to reflex motions of their host stars, and more recently through transits of some planets across the faces of the host stars. The detection of planets with the shortest known periods, 1.2–2.5 days, has mainly resulted from transit surveys which have generally targeted stars more massive than 0.75 M, where M is the mass of the Sun. Here we report the results from a planetary transit search performed in a rich stellar field towards the Galactic bulge. We discovered 16 candidates with orbital periods between 0.4 and 4.2 days, five of which orbit stars of masses in the range 0.44–0.75 M.

Image: Barred Spiral Milky Way Illustration by R. Hurt (SSC), JPL-Caltech, NASA. (Thanks, John Parres)

Reader comment: Kinnell says,

The Smithsonian had a great article recently (Oct 2006 issue) on the actions of locating these planets (extrasolar planets): Link.

Mongo says,

I would just like to point out for clarity's sake that we earthlings have never actually seen any other planet other than those in our own solar system. All other planets we have "discovered" are in fact located via the Wobble Method.