An astounding amount of astronomy is dependent on technological advancement, so it’s pretty neat when enough of the little things come together to allow for big breakthroughs. A group of researchers at the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland have recently used an intense Chilean telescope to survey the velocities of 150 stars, looking for perturbations of less than ONE METRE PER SECOND! (The average speed of stars in the universe is upwards of 32,000 metres per second). The fact this can be done at all just blows my mind, though the researchers claim that with continuing calibration this sensitivity can be increased further (accurate to less than 10cm per second). Anyway, the big finding: it seems that around 30% of stars (of those surveyed anyway) are orbited by planets roughly the same size of earth. This is a much, MUCH, higher proportion than was formerly commonly accepted, and lends evidence to the “crowded universe” theory - the idea that there are a lot of planets out there. I can only hope this means that the odds of finding life out there have increased substantially as well.

If you have access, read the Nature article. (I think it’s available free for the next few days)