Earth-Like Exoplanets Could Be Closer Than We Might Think

Today’s AP story on earth-like planets caught my eye in today’s newspaper.

Astronomers found the first planet outside our solar system when I was in high school. Before that, everyone said there probably were exoplanets, but no one could be sure. The first planets found were gas giants, where life as we know it could not exist. Now we have the ability to detect earth-size planets.

This reminds me of something I learned a few months ago when I read Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization by Robert Zubrin. Zubrin says that, although all my life Alpha Centauri has been thought to be the nearest star, there may be many closer starts. Many stars in the sky have not be studied to determine their distance. Most starts are dimmer than our sun. So some apparently distant sun-like stars could actually be dim stars very close to our solar system. There is still question about the number of stars near our solar system. There could be systems with Earth-like planets only a few light years away. We could have probes orbiting such a planet within a few human lifetimes.

I hope many other people besides me are willing to support astronomy research projects. I hope to see some amazing astronomical discoveries in my lifetime.