Comment Why are we surprised?? (Score 2, Interesting) 178
Why are scientists/people surprised when they find new exo-planets? Let's see, there are at least 200 billion stars in our own galaxy (possibly up to 400 billion), and it is 100,000 light years in diameter. The Milky Way has 5 spiral arms, our solar system is located in the shortest arm, and our capability to locate exo-planets barely extends outside our own spiral arm. The record find right now is 17,000 light years away. So we can only see planets in a very small percentage of our own galaxy, let alone the estimated "hundreds of billions" of other galaxies! The one star we know the best (our sun) has 8-9 planets circling it. I'd be more surprised if they didn't find planets around almost every star they look at!
There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on the entire earth...