This is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science. I'm Steve Mursky.

Astronomers have catalogued more than 3,500 exoplanets since the first one was found in 1988.

Part of the revelation and the revolution that's going on is that actually planets are incredibly

abundant and that means that potential incubators for life are everywhere

in the universe.

Columbia University astronomer and Scientific American blogger Caleb Sharf.

He was part of a conversation about life in the universe at NYU on March 22nd.

At which he was asked what our new understanding of the abundance of exoplanets out there does to the odds of finding

life.

What it definitely does is increase the odds of us finding an answer, I think.

I think that we can say with some confidence because we didn't know that there were so many planets around other stars 20 years ago and that also means that many of them are pretty nearby to us.

So what it definitely alters is the odds of us getting some answers because suppose planets were actually very rare.

The solar system was sitting here and then you have to go a thousand light years

to the next planetary system.

That would be difficult for us if we wanted to study those planets because they're a long way away.

So I'm doing the politician thing of kind of circling around the question here.

So it definitely, the abundance of planets improves the odds of us obtaining an answer, which is huge. Don't underestimate that. What does it mean for the actual probability of that being other life out there

and how often it occurs?

If I'm completely honest with you, we don't know.

You can watch the full 90 minute discussion featuring Scharf, Scientific Americans

Lee Billings, and Wall Street Journal Science writer Robert Lee Hotes at the NYU journalism

website.

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