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To: RightWhale
We now have proof, which we did not have a few short years ago, that other solar systems exist. We don't know much more about them than that, but it's amazing that we can detect them from these incredible distances.

What this confirms is that the formation of planets is not a unique phenomenon and that we can expect a certain percentage of stars out there to have planets. Our galaxy is hardly the only galaxy in the universe. Even if only one star in a billion has a planet like earth, we are still talking about hundreds of billions of similar planets.

That doesn't suggest that there is life on any of them, nor does it suggest that there can't be life on every single one of them.

93 posted on 07/03/2002 11:46:57 AM PDT by Dog Gone
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To: Dog Gone
Obviously we have to send expeditions out in as many radial directions from the solar system as possible to ground-truth as much of the universe as we can reach. We should start immediately. Seems like we have nothing better to do but pick fights over tiny desert tracts that nobody really wants.
99 posted on 07/03/2002 12:07:23 PM PDT by RightWhale
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