Short Post:
In Original broadcast order "Who Mourns for Adonais?", broadcast on September 22, 1967, was the 31st TOS episode and the 2nd episode of the 2nd season.
The episode begins in the Pollux system.
This is very interesting, because in our solar system there are 8 objects which are considered planets according to the current definition used by the International astronomical Union, and some evidence that there might possibly be a planet nine, as well as at least 5 objects currently classified as dwarf planets..
However, there are about 27 other objects in our solar system that were once classified as planets but which have been reclassified as other categories of objects over the centuries and millennia. They include the Sun, 10 moons, 14 asteroids or minor planets, and two dwarf planets, Ceres and Pluto.
In "Fight or Flight", the second episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, T'Pol says:
So Lt. Carolyn Palamas says there is a strange lack of intelligent life on the planets in the Pollux system? Does this mean that they checked, for example, 172,000 planets in the Pollux system and thus there statistically should be about four planets with intelligent life?
The statistics that I find by assuming a reasonable number of planets per star, and by counting the number of planets with intelligent life in a sample of the star systems closest to Earth, suggests that in the fictional universe of Star Trek a much higher proportion than one in forty three thousand of objects that we classify as planets have intelligent life.
T'Pol's statement directly contradicts the statistical evidence in the hundreds of Star Trek productions.
So therefore, in the era of Star Trek: Enterprise, Earth and Vulcan probably use a definition of planets that includes many objects that we would not classify as planets, and which have much lower probability of having intelligent life than objects which we would classify as planets.
Long Post:
In ancient times humans saw five star like dots of light in the skies that moved relative to the stars - Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The ancient Greets called them planetes asteres "wandering stars', or simply planetai, "wanderers". Ancient people naturally assumed that those dots of lights, and the discs or balls oft he Sun and the Moon, circled around the Earth Classical astronomers believed in seven planets circling the Earth - The Sun or Sol, the Moon or Luna, and Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.
With the heliocentric theory of Copernicus, only the Moon was still believed to orbit the Earth. The Sun was believed to be the center of the Solar system, then believed to be the entire universe, and the five planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn were believed to orbit around the Sun, as was the Earth, thus making Earth one of six planets orbiting around the Sun. The heliocentric theory eventually became accepted by science.
In 1609-1610 Galileo used a newly improved telescope to discover the four Galilean satellites of Jupiter, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Galileo classified them as planetae o r planets, but Johannes Kepler preferred to refer to them "satellites" of Jupiter. The first moons of Saturn to be discovered were Titan in 1655, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, and Iapetus from 1671-1684. They were sometimes called planets.
So after 1684 astronomers could speak of 15 planets if they counted moons as planets, or six planets if they only counted objects orbiting the Sun as planets. But soon only objects orbiting the Sun were called planets, and objects orbiting planets were more and more called satellites. When the first artificial satellites were launched beginning in 1957, natural objects orbiting planets came to be reclassified as natural satellites, but it is more and more usual to refer to them as moons.
In 1781 William Herschal discovered Uranus, and there were now 7 recognized planets. On January 1, 1801, Piazzi discovered 1 Ceres, which became recognized as the 8th planet to be discovered. A 9th planet, 2 Pallas, was discovered March 28, 1802, a 10th planet, 3 Juno, was discovered September 1, 1804, and an 11th planet, 4 Vesta, was discovered March 29, 1804. A 12th planet, 5 Astraea, was discovered on December 8, 1845.
Urbain Le Verrier calculated there should be a planet perturbing the orbit of Uranus, and his calculations led to the discovery of Neptune. on 23 September 1846. Neptune was considered the 13th known planet, or the 8th, depending on whether the little worlds between Mars and Jupiter were counted.
More of those little worlds continued to be discovered. 6 Hebe was discovered July 1, 1847 and became the 14th known planet, 7 Iris was discovered August 13, 1847 and became the 15th known planet, and 8 Flora was discovered October, 1847 and became the 16th known planet. 9 Metis was discovered April 25 1848, 10 Hygiea was discovered April 12, 1849, 11 Parthenope was discovered May 11, 1850, and 12 Victoria was discovered on September 13, 1850. 13 Egeria were discovered on November 2, 1850 14 Irene was discovered on May 19, 1851 and 15 Eunomia on July 29, 1851, considered by some the 23rd known planet.
15 Eunomia was the last little object between Mars and Jupiter to be classified as a planet by some. In the early 1850s astronomers decided that such tiny worlds should be classified as asteroids or minor planets, not as planets, and the list of planets went down to eight.
Urbain Le Verrier announced in 1859 that the excess precession of Mercury's orbit could best be explained by a small planet inside the orbit of Mercury, which he named Vulcan..there were alleged sightings of Vulcan, but none were cnfirmed, and in 1915 Einstein's theory of relativity provided another explanation for the excess precession of Mercury's orbit. Problems with the orbits of Uranus and Neptune caused astronomers to predict the existence of a planet beyond Neptune, called Planet X, X for unknown. In 1930 Pluto was discovered as a result of that search and the number of planets was increased to 9.
But Pluto seemed to get smaller and smaller with each new study, and less and less like Planet X. Then other objects orbiting in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune were found, and some were of similar size to Pluto.
In 2006 the International Astronomical Union issued a definition of a planet in the solar system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAU_definition_of_planet
A new category of solar system objects called dwarf planets was created.in 2006.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_planet
At the present time five objects, the asteroid 1 Ceres and four trans Neptunian objects (TNOs) Pluto, Iris, Haumaea, and Makemake are classified as dwarf planets.
This article has a list of other objects which are possible candidates to be classified as dwarf planets.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_possible_dwarf_planets
So the solar system currently has 8 objects classified as planets, and 5 objects classifed as dwarf planets, for a total of 13 - though astronomers consider dwarf planets to be a a totally separate category from planets and don't add the 8 planets and the 5 dwarf planets together to make 13. And it is possible that reclassification of known objects and discoveries of new objects might increase the list of dwarf planets to tens, hundreds, or thousands.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Nine
The hypothetical Planet Nine would certainly have to be large enough to be a planet and not a dwarf planet. So it is possible for one or more objects large enough to be classified as planets to be be discovered in the outer solar system, But it is not certain that any will be.
In "the Changeling" Kirk agrees to show Nomad a chart of their home solar system so Nomad can tell whether it is the point of origin.
Here is a link to an image of Chart 14A at Memory Alpha.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Sol_system?file=Earth_solar_system,_The_changeling.jpg
It shows 8 planetary orbits in the same plane and a more distant planetary orbit in a tilted plane. So it seems pretty much like a schematic and not to scale diagram of our solar system as it was known in 1967, when only a few astronomers had begun to suggest that Pluto should not be considered a planet.
I have several suggestions for identity of the 9th and farthest planet in Chart 14A:
One) The hypothetical distant Planet Nine.
Two) Another object in the outer solar system, the size and mass of a true planet, but not identical with the hypothetical Planet Nine, being totally separate.
Three) Pluto, grandfathered in as the ninth planet despite there being a few, or maybe tens, or maybe hundreds, or maybe thousands, of other objects which are just as qualified as Pluto to be considered planets.
The 7th planet out from the Sun in Chart 14A seems to be ringed, and thus Saturn, which means that Ceres could not be the extra planet.
There is one other group of possible planets in our solar systems, natural satellites or moons which are large enough to count as planetary mass objects, or planemos.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/planemo
There are 18 natural satellites or moons in the solar system which are large enough to be rounded by their gravity:
Earth's Luna/The Moon, Jupiter's Io, Europa, Ganymede, & Callisto, Saturn's Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys,Dione, Rhea, Titan, & Iapetus, Uranus's Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon, Neptune's Triton, and Pluto's Charon.
So counting eight planets, eighteen planetary mass moons, and 5 dwarf planets, there are 31 planetary mass objects in the solar system. And possibly some more might be discovered or reclassified as planetary mass objects in the future.
So it is interesting that in TOS the definition of a solar system planet apparently includes one more than the 8 currently official planets but doesn't include the potential tens, or hundreds, or thousands of bodies which could be listed as planets with equal justification as Pluto has. Unless some other object is discovered in the future which is clearly and undoubtedly a planet, or for some strange reason other solar system objects similar to Pluto are not discovered in the alternate universe of Star Trek, showing more than 8, but only 9, planets in Chart 14A seems rather illogical.
The current official definition of a planet applies only to planets within our solar system.
In the last 25 years over four thousand exoplanets, planets beyond our solar system, have been discovered.
Unfortunately, there is no official definition of an exoplanet yet. What is the difference between a planet and a star? A brown dwarf. is a object just massive enough to fuse deuterium but not massive enough for normal stellar fusion processes. The most massive planets are about 13 times the mass of Jupiter, and more massive objects are brown dwarfs, up to about 75 to 80 times the mass of Jupiter, the lower mass limit for stars
Most detection methods for exoplanets favor detecting more massive planets. The least massive known exoplanet, WD 1145 +017 b, has about 0.00067 the mass of Earth.
I note that 17 planets, dwarf planets, and moons in our solar system are more massive than WD 1145 -017 b, and the other 14 known planetary mass objects are less massive. So current exoplanet lists probably omit many smaller planetary mass objects in various star systems.
So let's go back to what T'Pol said in "Fight or Flight" the second episode of Star Trek: Enterprise:
And it is perfectly possible that by pure coincidence only one out of every forty three thousands planets supports intelligent life in real life. Most astrobiologists would probably estimate that a much smaller proportion of planets support intelligent life.
But in the fictional universe of Star Trek?
According to two fourth season episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise, Vulcan is between 16 and 17 light years from Earth. How many stars are between 16 and 17 light years from Earth?
according to this list: http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/astro/nearstar.html There are 12 star systems between 16 and 17 light years from Earth, containing 16 stars or brown dwarfs, and a few known exoplanets.
Those star systems include Altair and 40 Eridani, which is usually considered to be Vulcan's star..
Altair has intelligent life according to TOS "Amok Time". Assuming that the 16 stars and brown dwarfs in the 12 star systems each have between 8 and 31 planets and planetary mass objects, there should be about 128 to 496 planets and other planetary mass objects in those 12 star systems. So in those 12 star systems with 16 stars the odds of a planet having life would be about 1 in 248 to 1 in 64.
That makes the odds of a planet having intelligent life about 0.00403 to 0.0156, instead of the 0.0000232 that equals one in forty three thousand.
In a sphere with a radius of 17 light years around Earth there are about 62 star systems with about 96 stars and brown dwarfs. Assuming that each star and brown dwarf has between 8 and 31 planets and other planetary mass objects, that would make about 768 to 2,976 planets and planetary mass objects.
And in Star Trek there is intelligent life on Earth, Vulcan, at least one planet of Altair, and at least one planet of Epsilon Indii.
In "And the Children Shall Lead":
So presumably the marauders of Triacus made war upon intelligent beings living on one or more planets in the system of Epsilon Indii.
So with at least four planets with intelligent life out of 768 to 2,976 planets, one planet out of every 192 to 744 would have intelligent life.
So these small samples suggest that one planet in every 64 to 744 would have intelligent life, making it much more common than one planet in 43,000.
So for Carolyn Palamas to be surprised by the lack of intelligent life on the planets of Pollux, they could have a surveyed a lot few than the hundreds of thousands suggested by T'Pol's 1 in 43,000. For Palamas to expect to find four planets with intelligent life, for example, there would need to be only 256 to 2,976 planets orbiting Pollux instead of 172,000 planets.
But that is still a lot of planets orbiting a single star. So possibly Pollux has a relatively large number of planets of the right mass for life, and orbiting in the right zone for temperatures suitable for life, and having complex multi celled life forms on their surfaces, planets that would be much more likely to have intelligent life..
For example, Pollux could have about 100 planets and about 40 planets with complex, multi celled lifeforms, and usually about one such planet out of every ten would have intelligent life. So Palamas would expect to find about four planets with intelligent life in the Pollux system. And maybe they already checked 39 planets before they got to Pollux IV and found only one planet with intelligent life.
And maybe part of the explanation is that in the era of Star Trek: Enterprise: Earth and Vulcan used a very broad and inclusive definition of planets, one that included many objects which are not counted as planets, or even as planetary mass objects, today, and which are extremely unlikely to have life and intelligent life compared to objects which are defined as planets by Earth astronomers today. That would drive the proportion of objects classified as planets that had intelligent life very low.
In Original broadcast order "Who Mourns for Adonais?", broadcast on September 22, 1967, was the 31st TOS episode and the 2nd episode of the 2nd season.
The episode begins in the Pollux system.
This is very interesting, because in our solar system there are 8 objects which are considered planets according to the current definition used by the International astronomical Union, and some evidence that there might possibly be a planet nine, as well as at least 5 objects currently classified as dwarf planets..
However, there are about 27 other objects in our solar system that were once classified as planets but which have been reclassified as other categories of objects over the centuries and millennia. They include the Sun, 10 moons, 14 asteroids or minor planets, and two dwarf planets, Ceres and Pluto.
In "Fight or Flight", the second episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, T'Pol says:
So Lt. Carolyn Palamas says there is a strange lack of intelligent life on the planets in the Pollux system? Does this mean that they checked, for example, 172,000 planets in the Pollux system and thus there statistically should be about four planets with intelligent life?
The statistics that I find by assuming a reasonable number of planets per star, and by counting the number of planets with intelligent life in a sample of the star systems closest to Earth, suggests that in the fictional universe of Star Trek a much higher proportion than one in forty three thousand of objects that we classify as planets have intelligent life.
T'Pol's statement directly contradicts the statistical evidence in the hundreds of Star Trek productions.
So therefore, in the era of Star Trek: Enterprise, Earth and Vulcan probably use a definition of planets that includes many objects that we would not classify as planets, and which have much lower probability of having intelligent life than objects which we would classify as planets.
Long Post:
In ancient times humans saw five star like dots of light in the skies that moved relative to the stars - Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The ancient Greets called them planetes asteres "wandering stars', or simply planetai, "wanderers". Ancient people naturally assumed that those dots of lights, and the discs or balls oft he Sun and the Moon, circled around the Earth Classical astronomers believed in seven planets circling the Earth - The Sun or Sol, the Moon or Luna, and Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.
With the heliocentric theory of Copernicus, only the Moon was still believed to orbit the Earth. The Sun was believed to be the center of the Solar system, then believed to be the entire universe, and the five planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn were believed to orbit around the Sun, as was the Earth, thus making Earth one of six planets orbiting around the Sun. The heliocentric theory eventually became accepted by science.
In 1609-1610 Galileo used a newly improved telescope to discover the four Galilean satellites of Jupiter, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Galileo classified them as planetae o r planets, but Johannes Kepler preferred to refer to them "satellites" of Jupiter. The first moons of Saturn to be discovered were Titan in 1655, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, and Iapetus from 1671-1684. They were sometimes called planets.
So after 1684 astronomers could speak of 15 planets if they counted moons as planets, or six planets if they only counted objects orbiting the Sun as planets. But soon only objects orbiting the Sun were called planets, and objects orbiting planets were more and more called satellites. When the first artificial satellites were launched beginning in 1957, natural objects orbiting planets came to be reclassified as natural satellites, but it is more and more usual to refer to them as moons.
In 1781 William Herschal discovered Uranus, and there were now 7 recognized planets. On January 1, 1801, Piazzi discovered 1 Ceres, which became recognized as the 8th planet to be discovered. A 9th planet, 2 Pallas, was discovered March 28, 1802, a 10th planet, 3 Juno, was discovered September 1, 1804, and an 11th planet, 4 Vesta, was discovered March 29, 1804. A 12th planet, 5 Astraea, was discovered on December 8, 1845.
Urbain Le Verrier calculated there should be a planet perturbing the orbit of Uranus, and his calculations led to the discovery of Neptune. on 23 September 1846. Neptune was considered the 13th known planet, or the 8th, depending on whether the little worlds between Mars and Jupiter were counted.
More of those little worlds continued to be discovered. 6 Hebe was discovered July 1, 1847 and became the 14th known planet, 7 Iris was discovered August 13, 1847 and became the 15th known planet, and 8 Flora was discovered October, 1847 and became the 16th known planet. 9 Metis was discovered April 25 1848, 10 Hygiea was discovered April 12, 1849, 11 Parthenope was discovered May 11, 1850, and 12 Victoria was discovered on September 13, 1850. 13 Egeria were discovered on November 2, 1850 14 Irene was discovered on May 19, 1851 and 15 Eunomia on July 29, 1851, considered by some the 23rd known planet.
15 Eunomia was the last little object between Mars and Jupiter to be classified as a planet by some. In the early 1850s astronomers decided that such tiny worlds should be classified as asteroids or minor planets, not as planets, and the list of planets went down to eight.
Urbain Le Verrier announced in 1859 that the excess precession of Mercury's orbit could best be explained by a small planet inside the orbit of Mercury, which he named Vulcan..there were alleged sightings of Vulcan, but none were cnfirmed, and in 1915 Einstein's theory of relativity provided another explanation for the excess precession of Mercury's orbit. Problems with the orbits of Uranus and Neptune caused astronomers to predict the existence of a planet beyond Neptune, called Planet X, X for unknown. In 1930 Pluto was discovered as a result of that search and the number of planets was increased to 9.
But Pluto seemed to get smaller and smaller with each new study, and less and less like Planet X. Then other objects orbiting in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune were found, and some were of similar size to Pluto.
In 2006 the International Astronomical Union issued a definition of a planet in the solar system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAU_definition_of_planet
A new category of solar system objects called dwarf planets was created.in 2006.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_planet
At the present time five objects, the asteroid 1 Ceres and four trans Neptunian objects (TNOs) Pluto, Iris, Haumaea, and Makemake are classified as dwarf planets.
This article has a list of other objects which are possible candidates to be classified as dwarf planets.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_possible_dwarf_planets
So the solar system currently has 8 objects classified as planets, and 5 objects classifed as dwarf planets, for a total of 13 - though astronomers consider dwarf planets to be a a totally separate category from planets and don't add the 8 planets and the 5 dwarf planets together to make 13. And it is possible that reclassification of known objects and discoveries of new objects might increase the list of dwarf planets to tens, hundreds, or thousands.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Nine
The hypothetical Planet Nine would certainly have to be large enough to be a planet and not a dwarf planet. So it is possible for one or more objects large enough to be classified as planets to be be discovered in the outer solar system, But it is not certain that any will be.
In "the Changeling" Kirk agrees to show Nomad a chart of their home solar system so Nomad can tell whether it is the point of origin.
Here is a link to an image of Chart 14A at Memory Alpha.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Sol_system?file=Earth_solar_system,_The_changeling.jpg
It shows 8 planetary orbits in the same plane and a more distant planetary orbit in a tilted plane. So it seems pretty much like a schematic and not to scale diagram of our solar system as it was known in 1967, when only a few astronomers had begun to suggest that Pluto should not be considered a planet.
I have several suggestions for identity of the 9th and farthest planet in Chart 14A:
One) The hypothetical distant Planet Nine.
Two) Another object in the outer solar system, the size and mass of a true planet, but not identical with the hypothetical Planet Nine, being totally separate.
Three) Pluto, grandfathered in as the ninth planet despite there being a few, or maybe tens, or maybe hundreds, or maybe thousands, of other objects which are just as qualified as Pluto to be considered planets.
The 7th planet out from the Sun in Chart 14A seems to be ringed, and thus Saturn, which means that Ceres could not be the extra planet.
There is one other group of possible planets in our solar systems, natural satellites or moons which are large enough to count as planetary mass objects, or planemos.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/planemo
There are 18 natural satellites or moons in the solar system which are large enough to be rounded by their gravity:
Earth's Luna/The Moon, Jupiter's Io, Europa, Ganymede, & Callisto, Saturn's Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys,Dione, Rhea, Titan, & Iapetus, Uranus's Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon, Neptune's Triton, and Pluto's Charon.
So counting eight planets, eighteen planetary mass moons, and 5 dwarf planets, there are 31 planetary mass objects in the solar system. And possibly some more might be discovered or reclassified as planetary mass objects in the future.
So it is interesting that in TOS the definition of a solar system planet apparently includes one more than the 8 currently official planets but doesn't include the potential tens, or hundreds, or thousands of bodies which could be listed as planets with equal justification as Pluto has. Unless some other object is discovered in the future which is clearly and undoubtedly a planet, or for some strange reason other solar system objects similar to Pluto are not discovered in the alternate universe of Star Trek, showing more than 8, but only 9, planets in Chart 14A seems rather illogical.
The current official definition of a planet applies only to planets within our solar system.
In the last 25 years over four thousand exoplanets, planets beyond our solar system, have been discovered.
Unfortunately, there is no official definition of an exoplanet yet. What is the difference between a planet and a star? A brown dwarf. is a object just massive enough to fuse deuterium but not massive enough for normal stellar fusion processes. The most massive planets are about 13 times the mass of Jupiter, and more massive objects are brown dwarfs, up to about 75 to 80 times the mass of Jupiter, the lower mass limit for stars
Most detection methods for exoplanets favor detecting more massive planets. The least massive known exoplanet, WD 1145 +017 b, has about 0.00067 the mass of Earth.
I note that 17 planets, dwarf planets, and moons in our solar system are more massive than WD 1145 -017 b, and the other 14 known planetary mass objects are less massive. So current exoplanet lists probably omit many smaller planetary mass objects in various star systems.
So let's go back to what T'Pol said in "Fight or Flight" the second episode of Star Trek: Enterprise:
And it is perfectly possible that by pure coincidence only one out of every forty three thousands planets supports intelligent life in real life. Most astrobiologists would probably estimate that a much smaller proportion of planets support intelligent life.
But in the fictional universe of Star Trek?
According to two fourth season episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise, Vulcan is between 16 and 17 light years from Earth. How many stars are between 16 and 17 light years from Earth?
according to this list: http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/astro/nearstar.html There are 12 star systems between 16 and 17 light years from Earth, containing 16 stars or brown dwarfs, and a few known exoplanets.
Those star systems include Altair and 40 Eridani, which is usually considered to be Vulcan's star..
Altair has intelligent life according to TOS "Amok Time". Assuming that the 16 stars and brown dwarfs in the 12 star systems each have between 8 and 31 planets and planetary mass objects, there should be about 128 to 496 planets and other planetary mass objects in those 12 star systems. So in those 12 star systems with 16 stars the odds of a planet having life would be about 1 in 248 to 1 in 64.
That makes the odds of a planet having intelligent life about 0.00403 to 0.0156, instead of the 0.0000232 that equals one in forty three thousand.
In a sphere with a radius of 17 light years around Earth there are about 62 star systems with about 96 stars and brown dwarfs. Assuming that each star and brown dwarf has between 8 and 31 planets and other planetary mass objects, that would make about 768 to 2,976 planets and planetary mass objects.
And in Star Trek there is intelligent life on Earth, Vulcan, at least one planet of Altair, and at least one planet of Epsilon Indii.
In "And the Children Shall Lead":
So presumably the marauders of Triacus made war upon intelligent beings living on one or more planets in the system of Epsilon Indii.
So with at least four planets with intelligent life out of 768 to 2,976 planets, one planet out of every 192 to 744 would have intelligent life.
So these small samples suggest that one planet in every 64 to 744 would have intelligent life, making it much more common than one planet in 43,000.
So for Carolyn Palamas to be surprised by the lack of intelligent life on the planets of Pollux, they could have a surveyed a lot few than the hundreds of thousands suggested by T'Pol's 1 in 43,000. For Palamas to expect to find four planets with intelligent life, for example, there would need to be only 256 to 2,976 planets orbiting Pollux instead of 172,000 planets.
But that is still a lot of planets orbiting a single star. So possibly Pollux has a relatively large number of planets of the right mass for life, and orbiting in the right zone for temperatures suitable for life, and having complex multi celled life forms on their surfaces, planets that would be much more likely to have intelligent life..
For example, Pollux could have about 100 planets and about 40 planets with complex, multi celled lifeforms, and usually about one such planet out of every ten would have intelligent life. So Palamas would expect to find about four planets with intelligent life in the Pollux system. And maybe they already checked 39 planets before they got to Pollux IV and found only one planet with intelligent life.
And maybe part of the explanation is that in the era of Star Trek: Enterprise: Earth and Vulcan used a very broad and inclusive definition of planets, one that included many objects which are not counted as planets, or even as planetary mass objects, today, and which are extremely unlikely to have life and intelligent life compared to objects which are defined as planets by Earth astronomers today. That would drive the proportion of objects classified as planets that had intelligent life very low.
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