Yesterday, I read
an article in the New York Times about a woman at M.I.T. who is trying to find us another Earth-like planet to relieve some of the pressures we are facing here. An astrophysicist, she is focused on the study of exoplanets in order to find a new place for humans to live someday.
Personally, I am not a big fan of what she is trying to do, but I am always fascinated with this fact that was stated in the article, "
that there are hundreds of billions of galaxies, and that each might contain hundreds of billions of stars." It always makes me realize just what a tiny part of the universe we really are. As the article states, Dr. Sara Seager...
"wants to find an Earthlike exoplanet - a rocky planet of reasonable mass that orbits its star within a temperate "Goldilocks zone" that is not too hot or too cold, which would allow water to remain liquid - and determine that there is life on it.
But there are problems--beginning with the fact that it would take 73,000 years to get to the nearest planet--even if you traveled at the current maximum speed possible.
The Bottom Line. On the small planet we call home, we'd be much better served if a few more geniuses out there would choose to do something radical about our grossly unsustainable lifestyle. If something doesn't change pretty soon, I doubt that our civilization will make it to the next century. Here are two of my 2015 full-size blogs on this topic--followed by another link to that NY Times article.
