I intended to schedule this for tomorrow… but the news it WAY TOO BIG not to share now.

Throughout the history of our species we have pondered the idea of whether or not life might exist somewhere out there, somewhere in the cosmos on a planet like our own.  We have assumed (wrongly, IMHO) that an environment similar to Earth must exist in order for extraterrestrial life to develop (or to have developed).

It’s easy for us to discredit the idea of there being some other kind of life not based on water and carbon.  That’s the only kind we know, after all.

Well, guess what?

Planet Hunters Edge Closer to Their Holy Grail:

The announcement that a small Earth-like planet has been found within the habitable zone of a distant star is the result of more than a decade-long search for worlds like our own.

The first planets outside our solar system were spotted in 1990 and were in some sense a disappointment. They were dead worlds, in orbit around a spinning stellar corpse that bathed them with deadly radiation. The first planet circling a normal star outside our solar system was not discovered until 1995. This enormous gas giant called Peg 51 b hugged its star tighter than Mercury does our Sun, so it hardly resembled Earth or afforded conditions friendly to life.

Fast forward 12 years and the number of extrasolar planets, or “exoplanets,” has swelled to nearly 230. The latest discovery shows planet-hunting scientists are closing in on the Holy Grail of their field: finding another world like our own.

The new world, called Gliese 581 C, is only about five times the mass of Earth. It lies within the habitable zone of its tiny red parent star and can thus sustain liquid water on its surface, and with it, possibly life.

That’s right!  Now we hear that…

…astronomers have spotted a cosy alien planet that might be hospitable to life. The planet is not much bigger than the Earth, and it enjoys balmy temperatures of about 20° C (68° F) as well as spectacular scarlet sunsets.

“It’s the smallest, lightest planet known at this time,” says Stéphane Udry from the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland. “And it’s just at the right distance from its star for liquid water to possibly exist on its surface.”

There’s much more information at both of those links.

I find this news more than exciting, more than exhilarating, more than overwhelming in its implications.

We teeter on the edge of a fascinating discovery, one that challenges every mystical assumption, every metaphysical teaching.  We stand on a precipice facing the unknown with unexpected challenges to our species’ most basic assumptions about the origin of everything.

This is indeed the time to feel indescribable anticipation about what rests just ahead, just around the next curve, just over the next hill of discovery.

I can almost feel it in my bones.  I can almost see the greatest scientific announcement ever.

It’s near.  It’s palpable.  It’s coming.