First, I should say right away that the planet that has been in the news so much lately is not known to be "earth like" ... depending on what you think "earth like" is. What we know is that the planet orbits its star in a position that allows for the possibility that water on its surface could be liquid. But, the possibility that the planet has a "surface" ... as opposed to some increasingly dense gaseous layer like Neptune ... has not yet been established. Not that this would favor life one way or another. For all we know, getting life started on a hard crust covered earth is way harder than on a gaseous liquid water rich blob of a planet.
Either way, it is very interesting that, according to reports, the US Air Force is paying SETI to restart its operations and focus on this new planet to see if we can pick anything up.
Which makes a remarkable amount of sense, don't you think? If there's liquid water, there's probably life. If there is life, there is probably Milton Berle.
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They'll probably have something like wontons, empanadas, pirogies, etc, since all cultures in the universe must have them.
Every culture has it's flood myth. Thus, the focus on water in the search for ET.
And Swedish meatballs (per Babylon 5).
i find the AF support odd.except for testing the sensitivity of some device they want to plug into the SETI system i can't think of why they would do that.
Fronmwhat Igather its probaly more of a gas dwarf than a rock giant. Still worth a try though.
@3. ToSeek | December 8, 2011 5:03 PM : Great refrence! Love it. :-)
scidogs, if aliens attack, the Air Force is our first line of defense!