Some people say that they have lived past lives on other planets – this of course implies that there are other planets with intelligent life out there. As science becomes more adept at sensing distant “earths”, the prospect of finding evidence of otherworldly life becomes more tangible. I just hope that alien intelligence is discovered in THIS lifetime! Call me impatient, but I don’t want to wait until the next go around for this mystery to be solved…

Scientists spot nearby ‘super-Earth’

By John D. Sutter, CNN

“Astronomers announced this week they found a water-rich and relatively nearby planet that’s similar in size to Earth.

While the planet probably has too thick of an atmosphere and is too hot to support life similar to that found on Earth, the discovery is being heralded as a major breakthrough in humanity’s search for life on other planets.

“The big excitement is that we have found a watery world orbiting a very nearby and very small star,” said David Charbonneau, a Harvard professor of astronomy and lead author of an article on the discovery, which appeared this week in the journal Nature.

The planet, named GJ 1214b, is 2.7 times as large as Earth and orbits a star much smaller and less luminous than our sun. That’s significant, Charbonneau said, because for many years, astronomers assumed that planets only would be found orbiting stars that are similar in size to the sun.

Because of that assumption, researchers didn’t spend much time looking for planets circling small stars, he said. The discovery of this “watery world” helps debunk the notion that Earth-like planets could form only in conditions similar to those in our solar system…”

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