I know it’s been a few weeks since my last post, and I apologize. Things have been crazy. I couldn’t let this story pass by though.

Lots of planets have been discovered in the last few years thanks to some great advancements in detection techniques. Few, however, are as exciting as the one discovered earlier this year: a warm, rocky planet, with average surface temperatures of 0-40 C (just the right temps for liquid water…and life), located just 20 light years away from our solar system. It’s about 1.5 times the size of Earth, and although it is quite close to its sun (14 times closer than Earth, actually, resulting in a “year” that’s only 13 Earth days long) the temperature of that star is substantially cooler than our own, generating the reasonable temperatures mentioned previously despite the proximity.

This is, by far, the planet most resembling Earth out of all non-Sol planets discovered so far, and it’s practically in our back yard, astronomically speaking. 20 light years is still…well, 20 years away even if we could travel at the speed of light, but considering that our galaxy alone is 100,000 light years in diameter, and the known universe is hundreds of billions of light years across, 20 light years is virtually next door. This kind of proximity means that if there were to be intelligent life on that planet, we could actually send a message and get a reply back in less than 50 years! Far fetched, yes, but fun to think about.