Billions of Possible Earths

THE NEWS just keeps getting better and better. Every day astronomers all over the world, both professional and amateur, are gathering mountains of information concerning planets orbiting other stars. To date, roughly two thousand seven hundred and forty have been found, and confirmed.

"Earthlike" planets are defined as any planet which is roughly the same size as the earth, and orbits its star at a distance at which water can exist for long periods of time in liquid form. We still have no idea whether any of these other planets actually have water, or even what they are made of; all we know is their approxinate size, and distance from star.

And that's quite a lot to know, actually. Simply being the right distance and size make a planet at least earthlike in a general way, regardless of its actual precise characteristics. And who knows, it may be that there is life all over the universe thriving on planets which are not earth like at all, but instead are much larger, or smaller, and orbit much closer, or farther from their star.

for all we know, life doesn't even require water, or planets, or stars, or...but assuming that the best chance of finding intelligent life is on planets generally like earth, scientists estimate, now get this, that there are probably roughly four and a half billion, with a "B", earthlike planets in the milky way galaxy.

This is why it keeps getting better. With this many probable eath like planets, it would be possible for a whole fleet of starships to search across the galaxy forever, and still not look in all the possible places harboring life.

And, relaly, when you think about it, it hardly seems likely that, given a universe full of planets similar in size and temperature to earth, that we are alone, or even close to be alone. At this point, it seems far more likely that the universe is full of life, and this is cause for great excitement.

This would be a great time to restart the space program in real earnest,a global effort to explore space and look for life. We are heading in that direction. Exploring space and fixing the earth's ecosystem should be enough to keep us all off the streets for a few decades.