Maybe it’s time to put some new numbers into the Drake Equation. That’s the formula, developed by astronomer Frank Drake in 1961, that estimates the number of civilizations in the galaxy which are sufficiently advanced to have harnessed the electromagnetic spectrum—a fancy way of saying they have radio waves, TV and other components of technology that we could detect even from here.

Not only does the number of planets outside our own solar system continue to increase—it’s now up to 294 —but the range of stars that have planets and the range of sizes of the planets themselves also keep expanding. Today, for instance, astronomers are reporting the discovery of the smallest extrasolar planet yet (only three times more massive than Earth), orbiting a star only one-twentieth the mass of our Sun. That suggests that even stellar lightweights, which are relatively common, can have a retinue of earthlike planets.

“No planets have previously been found to orbit stars with masses less than about 20 percent that of the Sun,” said David Bennett of the University of Notre Dame, who led the study. “But this finding indicates that even the smallest stars can host planets.”