Billion and billions of-wait, billions with a "B"?

"What, are you going to count?
Just...just take our word for it."

-NASA

Wow! NASA just announced that there are between three hundred million and three billion habitable planets in the galaxy! That's amazing! That's Earth-shattering! That's a little hard to verify. Look, I'm as thrilled as anyone at the prospect of millions and billions of strange new worlds out there just waiting for us to seek them out and boldly trash them like we did this one, but are there? That many I mean. I don't work for NASA-I mean obviously, because I'm sitting here writing this blog, but that doesn't sound quite right. 

It's a happy medium even out most advanced
microwave technology rarely achieves. 

And look, my math SAT scores barely qualify me to do a sudoku puzzle, but millions with an "M" to billions with a "B?" I just...really? That many? Are they sure about that? Sure enough to make a claim like this? Because that seems like an awfully big number for the usually cautious space agency. To get to this estimate, they're assuming that at least seven percent of stars similar to our sun likely have rocky, Earth-sized-ish planets within the habitable zone. That is, not so close to their parent stars they're on fire, but not so far that they're frozen.

I'm sorry, you're not about to suggest
that maybe Total Recall wasn't 100% 
scientifically accurate, are you?

And that assumption is based on the number of eco-planets observed by the Kepler Space telescope which observed X number of stars, and of those Y number of them have planets in the microwaveable meal zone. Therefore there are Z number of habitable planets in the galaxy. Cool. But is a planet habitable because it's rocky and a certain distance from the star? Is there water? Oxygen? Wifi? How can they tell? Mars is in the Solar system's habitable zone, but Ronny Cox's character in Total Recall exploded when he went outside of the dome so...  

I'm not trying to liquid methane rain on anyone's space parade, but it seems like a long walk from "There are potentially planets that might exist that are the correct distance from their suns so that someone standing on the surface wouldn't die immediately..." and "There are definitely billions of habitable planets, so spin up those FTL's!"

A long walk to habitable, and an even longer jog to inhabited by
scantily clad, new-age polys that want to help you explore this Earth emotion
called love but will murder you if you step on the wrong flower bed. 

Or a lot. A lot of hedging.

And again, these are experts publishing a study in The Astronomical Journal, and they did say that this is an estimate and not a definitive number, but there's something about just saying it. Like, this is science and we expect a certain, reticence? Especially when they make a claim with such mind-blowing implications as a galaxy full of M-class planers. I love the optimism. I do. And Sagan knows we need a little right now, but I feel like they should have hedged a little, you know?

Anyway, I guess the point is somewhat moot since it'll be quite some time before anyone figures out a way to generate the impossible energies necessary for an interstellar voyage. I mean, we can't even get the pandemic under control and all that requires is for everyone to wear a goddamn mask. 

Pictured: not rocket science.