Natalie Angier has a great little article in the New York Times today talking about some exciting recent discoveries in astronomy. It seems that other stars in our very own galaxy may harbor earth-like, or at least rocky, planets. This is exciting because in the past most of the planets detected around other stars have been assumed to be gas giants similar to Jupiter and Saturn (though many of these foreign planets are assumed to be even larger than our huge neighbors). As Angier’s article points out most of these new planets are entirely too close to their stars to likely harbor any life, but the discovery that rocky planets might be quite common around other stars is making some scientists hopeful of finding potential life harboring worlds in the future. I think it would be great to hear about the discovery of a distant planet that could potentially posses life, but at the same time it would likely be kind of bittersweet as current technology won’t let us know for certain whether we are encountering life or not. Personally I think we have a far greater chance of finding some evidence for life beyond Earth in our own solar system (on Mars or perhaps some of the moons of the other planets) before we find anything out by another star. Still, I am glad that we keep looking. My personal stance and opinion on life elsewhere in the universe is that it very likely inevitably exists regardless whether we detect it or not (which I suppose raises some philosophical questions about existence but I am not trying to write about philosophy here).
By the way next to Eric Asimov and Olivia Judson, Natalie Angier is one of my all-time favorite writers for the New York Times
