Kepler Confirms Exoplanet Inside Star's Habitable Zone

ROFL. Yeah, when we land there. It's ONLY 600 light years after all.

I get it, I really do. We've only barely been to our own moon. We can't even get to mars. If we said we were going to send a probe you'd have every right to laugh, let alone a manned mission.

But hear me out first.

Mankind has only been engaged in industry for a couple of hundred years. And that was enough to get us to the moon. And humanity has no signs of ending anytime soon. What will we be capable of in another thousand years? Ten thousand? A million? Because if we don't do anything stupid we have that time. Our sun has a few billion years left in it.

It's important to look for extrasolar planets. It is important to see if they can maintain human life.

Reason being, that's the first step. We won't ever try to leave this solar system if we have no expectations to be able to survive out there. Now we are finding out that there are planets out there that might be able to support us. Now we have a reason to want to try to reach them. Yes, 600 light years is an uncrossable barrier to us. Today. But if you told the Wright brothers that we'd be walking on the moon in 70 years they would have told you you're nuts. They wouldn't have believed it. Another uncrossable barrier. To them. Not to us.

Finding these planets is exciting. It says that there is a reason to try to go. It kindles a desire to go see them. And given a million years of human progress, the science *will* come. Maybe it won't be as sexy as warp ships. Maybe it'll just be colony ships moving at a fraction of light speed and take a thousand years to get there. But one way or another, we will get there.

We will most likely visit this planet. Someday.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/v8RWS68ZlLI/kepler-confirms-exoplanet-inside-stars-habitable-zone

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