By now, I’m sure you’ve heard the news that scientists have discovered a possible Earth-like planet orbiting a Red Dwarf. The planet, named Gliese 581c, is about 20 light-years from Earth. That is to say that if you could travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles/second), it would take you twenty years to get there. Since at the current time, we can’t even come close to the speed of light, the distance involved is relatively moot.
For some perspective on this distance/speed, consider that Voyager-1 is our most-distant spacecraft, which was launched in 1977. In September of 2004, it was only 13 light-hours away from Earth. It took Voyager-1 twenty-seven years to travel 13 light hours. For some more perspective, our galaxy (the Milky Way) is about 100,000 light-years across. The Milky Way is one of billions of galaxies in the known universe.
It’s extremely important to note that scientists have estimated the surface temperature of this possibly rocky, wet planet is between 32 and 100 degrees, F. The planet, at this point in the science, has many earth-like characteristics.
Apparently, this discovery immediately boosted to odds that humans are not alone in the Universe, from 1000-1 to 100-1. Personally, I’ve always believed life – intelligent and otherwise – exists out there. In fact, I’m one of the people that believe that intelligent life has visited Earth in the past, is currently visiting us, and will visit us in the future. I think it’s sort of selfish to think that we, as humans, are the sole piece of life in this single universe. There might be multiple universes, no one knows. Humans have been around for a few hundred thousand years at best. The Earth is billions of years old, and there are countless stars and planets out there that are several billion years older than Earth. Life may exist elsewhere, or it may have existed on some other planet billions of years ago. To them, we are the future. To us, they are the past.
What’s also interesting to note is that all of our radio signals have reached this planet since the mid 1980s, so while radio contact isn’t necessarily the best means of contacting a civilization (as they have to be listening for that signal), it has reached “them” now for 20+ years.
NASA has always said, “if you want to find life, follow the water.” With the potential there for this planet to have large amounts of liquid water, there exist the possibility of life. If the possibility of life exists, the possibility of intelligent life exists. If intelligent life exists, I’d like to see the die-hard Christians explain that one!