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This is Scientific American’s 60-Second Science. I’m Adam Hinterthuer. Got a minute?

If there's a line in Vegas on the odds¹ of life on another planet, now might be a good time to place a wager². A study in the journal Science examined 166 Sun-sized stars and found nearly one in four had rocky, earth-sized planets in close, earth-like orbits. The finding might chart a new course for extrasolar planet research.

Most planet-formation models predict a “planet desert” within one astronomical³ unit (or the average distance from the Earth to the Sun) of a host star. Gaseous⁴ planets like Jupiter or Saturn⁵, which form much farther away, on the cold side of what’s called the “ice line,” are thought to be more common.

But a team of researchers at Hawaii's Keck observatory⁶ cast their eyes on stars similar to our Sun. Twenty-three percent of those stars had small, rocky planets orbiting right in the range where the predicted “planet desert” should be.

The researchers say their discovery calls for substantial revisions to current astronomical models. It also makes the possibility of life on some similar planet spinning a similar, habitable distance from its sun seem like a better bet.

Thanks for the minute. For Scientific American’s 60-Second Science. I’m Adam Hinterthuer.