Odds Favor Discovery of Earth-Like Exoplanet in 2013

Earth-like exoplanets have gotten a lot of attention in the last few years; it's exciting to think that there's life — or even just life-sustaining conditions — on planets other than Earth, whether near by (on Mars) or much farther away (orbiting Vega). Projects like NASA's Kepler, and the ground-based HARPS, attempt to spot planets outside our solar system of all kinds. These exoplanet discoveries have been ramping up lately, and so has sorting of the discovered planets by size and other characteristics; the odds are looking good, say astronomers quoted by Space.com, that an Earth-like planet will be found this year. Abel Mendez runs the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, and UC Berkeley astromer Geoff Marcy looks for planets as part of the Kepler team; they explain in the article why they think 2013 is an auspicious one for planet hunters.

Comments

Re:Forget about it.

[SternisheFan]

The impossible is just something that hasn't been done yet. When I was a kid, walking on the moon was 'impossible', never going to happen. Now, mayhap the human race is stuck in this solar system for the next 10,000 years or so, it may be we'll never get out. Still leaves lots to do and explore and colonize.

OTOH, ya' never know. Some theory that's still relegated to the sci-fi class might get proven doable, warping space-time and "riding the wave" looks to be possible. Or,aliens could land and gift faster than life travel to us (if we prove 'worthy' of it, or we could beat 'em up and take it from them!).

Today we have 'impossible' Star Trek tech in our pockets. And amazing tech is coming down the pike in our near future. But to say "it's never gonna' happen", IMO, is a rather short sighted opinion, not unlike past pessimists who couldn't see past their own closed off reality.

Re:Poor definitions

[dkleinsc]

Actually, we have no idea how tilted the odds are against life. What we do know:
- On the conditions that existed on Earth in its early history, forming organic compounds was more-or-less inevitable.
- Life exists on Earth under really unusual conditions, like highly acidic underground lakes.
- There's some evidence (but no conclusive proof) of there once having been microbes on Mars.

It's quite possible life is rare. It's also quite possible life is common. We simply have no way of knowing one way or the other right now.