A bunch of smart guys came out today and said they had found this new planet....name GJ 667Cc. There's this neat thing about this newly discovered planet. It's about five times the size of Earth, and they think it has all the necessary ingredients for life (mostly water, which is a vital element). So they'd kinda hinted that they want to identify it as a "super-Earth". Along the way, they note that it's got a star (sun), and that it takes about 28 days to make an orbit around this sun. And.....it's awful dang close to us (22 light-years).
Life? Well....statistically....as each month passes and folks identify more planets....the odds are going into one direction. It might have been one in a billion forty years ago. Today.....we might be closer to one in a million. In five years? We might be at one in 100k planets. And eventually....we will reach the odds of one in two chances of finding a planet with life on it. At that point.....most of our perceptions in life chance, dramatically.
For half the folks out there, it's going to be a pretty rough time. Most of their religious thoughts will be challenged, and those stupid movies from the 1970s with 'bad aliens' are going to come back to cause worries. The truth is that we might just walk into some situation where we find a race of redneck-like folks....who mostly eat catfish....dig septic tanks on a regular basis....clean their handguns every Saturday morning....wear clean underwear whenever they leave the house.....sip whiskey from a glass cup only.....admire tube-topped ladies greatly.....prefer the NCAA bowl situation continue on....and enjoy hugging any gal who likes even halfway like Dolly Parton.
The trouble is....we just don't know. But we might ought to start thinking numbers here. One in a million is a fairly good number to avoid worrying.....but when you get down to a one in two chance.....well....you'd best have a vastly different view of life in your mind.
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