WANT to know where in the Galaxy you might find extraterrestrial life? Help
is at hand from astronomers who have mapped out a “galactic habitable zone”, a
narrow region of the Milky Way where suitable terrestrial planets are most
likely to exist.
Astronomers already map out the habitable zone around individual stars, which
they define as the region where a rocky planet could retain enough liquid water
to support life. Now Guillermo Gonzalez and colleagues at the University of
Washington in Seattle have widened their sights to define a habitable zone for
the entire Galaxy.
To do this, the researchers…
