WOW ~ just ... WOW! ~ Sooz

NASA's Kepler Finds First Planet in ‘Habitable Zone'
Carl Franzen December 5, 2011, 7:30 PM

Looks like we won't be going there any time soon considering it's 5,663,953,598,054,400 km away.

no. but if life developed along a quicker time line there, it is possible that they have detectable signals emanating from there. you can bet that we are searching the bandwidth for that as we so pleasantly converse here.

i'm impressed with two things, here, and troubled by one.

first, the pace of planet discovery is amazing. it is over 5 per day since this project was launched.
second, the fact that there are nearly 50 planet candidates is also really fantastic.

what troubles me is this method they are using: the only planets we can see are the ones that are along the visual plane that contains their sun. i don't know what % of the total spectrum that is, but it HAS to be very very low. in other words, we are probably missing not only the 99% that are outside of our visual range, but also the 99% that are within it. better than nothing, but really small potatoes.

indeed, gramps......indeed.