[Always Right]

The universe is just too big for us ever to know, but it is clear that a planet like ours is rare.

[Huntingtonian]

How would we know planets like ours are rare? The article EXPLICITLY states that the current techniques can't detect earth-sized planets! So this whole article is a heap of dung. Follow this logic: "in our current sample, which can't possibly include any examples of earth-sized planets because we can't detect them, we find only large gas giants so we conclude earth sized planets must be rare".

Yeah, whatever....

Alternately we could argue that ANY empty system (around which no planets have been detected) could be home to currently undetectable earth sized planets. Since there seem to be a lot of empty systems earth sized planets could be incredibly common!

In fact our limited gas-giant only detecting system may only be capable of identifying a very small and unusual subset of the real planet population out there. It would be like standing on a corner in Dallas Texas dressed in drag and wearing a Kerry/Edwards button trying to strike up a conversation with passersby about politics and then concluding that everyone in American is a pro-gay democrat since those are the only ones who talked to you!

[Jack Black]

The universe is just too big for us ever to know, but it is clear that a planet like ours is rare.

But its so big even local rarity doesn't make it rare. I guess its a definition of rare question. Are diamonds rare? Compared to sand yes. But there are diamonds all over the place. Pretty much every woman in the USA has at least a few. Now if I asked "are women in the USA rare" you would say no.

There are estimated to be 10^21 stars. If only one in a million has a earth type planet that is still 10^15 "earths" out there. If only one in a billion has an 'earth' there are still 100 billion "earths".

Each human could have 20 of their own? Is that rare??