In reaction to this article "Tens of billions of potentially habitable, Earth-size planets in our galaxy, say astronomers"...
As a child I read countless books about astronomy. All discussed how "maybe" there were planets around other stars, but likely it would be very hard to ever know, and if there were, likely these exoplanets would not be in the Goldilocks zone of being "just right" for supporting life as we know it.
The more I read, the more aware I became of how cautious scientists were. But always had a hunch that indeed there were definitely countless planets around single star systems like ours.
Generally I assumed that what we witness close to us is likely very much the same far away. Surely we are not special, just normal. The likelihood of our neighborhood being an outlier would surely be small.
Glad the my astronomical hunches--along with recent paleontological ones--have been right...
As a child I read countless books about astronomy. All discussed how "maybe" there were planets around other stars, but likely it would be very hard to ever know, and if there were, likely these exoplanets would not be in the Goldilocks zone of being "just right" for supporting life as we know it.
The more I read, the more aware I became of how cautious scientists were. But always had a hunch that indeed there were definitely countless planets around single star systems like ours.
Generally I assumed that what we witness close to us is likely very much the same far away. Surely we are not special, just normal. The likelihood of our neighborhood being an outlier would surely be small.
Glad the my astronomical hunches--along with recent paleontological ones--have been right...
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