Humans have long looked to the sky and wondered how many Earth-like worlds were out there. Thanks to powerful telescopes developed in recent years, both professional and amateur astronomers have discovered a plethora of planets orbiting other stars. In the three decades since the first confirmed exoplanet, they’ve indexed more than 4,000 — many of which sit at similar distances from their stars.
Read More: NASA’s Exoplanet-Hunting Space Telescope Needs Your Help Finding New Worlds
But that’s led researchers to another question: How many of these planets boast a climate like our own, with two poles covered in ice and a relatively ice-free middle?
To find out, a team of researchers from the University of Washington and the University of Bern computationally modeled hundreds of thousands of hypothetical exoplanets. They discovered that our fortunate ice situation isn’t that common, and is due mostly to Earth’s relatively moderate axial tilt.
“There ...
