Is anyone else a little scared that we're "searching for livable planets"?

Question

I don't ever remember space exploration being described as a search for livable planets.

Thanks for scaring me, Yahoo! News.

Answer 1

Why scared?
Pessimist view: the way we're going, we're going to need another one.
Optimist view: if we get spread out on several planets, no one big disaster (Meteor strike, mega-volcano) can get us all.

Now, if we find a livable planet and it already has a large beach-towel draped on it, we might need to worry.

Answer 2

Today, we know that the universe is immense. We also know that galaxies within our universe go on and on and there are probably millions upon millions of them in existence. Most of these galaxies contain uncountable numbers of stars. (Which are suns) some of these stars are huge. Others are tiny. Some are very new and some are extremely ancient. Some have burned out, collapsed upon themselves, and have become "black holes in space, while others have exploded in super-nova. But most importantly, some are about the same size uniformity and consistency of our sun. Throughout the universe, there are probably trillions upon trillions of stars that are very much the same as our sun. If one believes in extra terrestrial intelligent life, one cannot look into a clear night sky without feeling extremely humbled and insignificant. It is my belief that we are most certainly, not the only religious and intelligent life in our universe.

What if:

Several planets exist throughout the universe with intelligent life that is older than we are, and they have progressed at close to the same rate as we have technologically. Would not this mean there are millions of planets that could be scientifically and technically hundreds of thousands of years ahead of us? When one considers that since the 1950's we have exponentially grown, and in less than fifty years we have developed technology that has allowed us to medically transplant human organs, modify and select specific genes within the "DNA" chain to produce completely different species or exact "clones “ send men and machines to explore our solar system and beyond, and develop computer/communication equipment that is phenomenal, multi-galactic space travel will probably be common for our races within the next one or two thousand years. For years we have been probing our galaxy and beyond with super sensitive antennas, searching for any electrical frequency radio wave transmissions from afar that would confirm other intelligent life.

What if:
Mankind is universal?

What if:
A universal question of man is "why am I?"

What if:
The answer is "I am why.

Answer 3

Well there's a secret conspiracy... Remember how everyone was obsessed with finding life on mars a while ago, and then all of the sudden it was basically decided that it couldn't survive there? Well did you notice recently that everyone suddenly decided that life COULD survive there again? And now they're looking for life with all of this enthusiasm? They probably found some microbial life on mars, but they're covering it up because if they told the public, sam brownback would gather his army of blood-drinking, flesh-eating evangelical, rat-tail hair-styled fat ladies and start a new crusade, except this one would be against logic, rationality, and the advancement of the greatest scientific precendent since penicillin(stem-cell nresearch). Oh wait, he's already on that crusade.

Answer 4

A new NASA mission, the Kepler Mission, has that as one of it's primary goals. There's no reason to be alarmed; our planet is not in imminent danger. It's just a natural human instinct to explore.

Answer 5

Well Earth is just about gone with all the pollution - Humans are gonna have to find somewhere else to live or do like the Dinosaurs- Go Extinct.

Answer 6

I think it's, well, fascinating.

And I think it just reflects how we've advanced. At first we were mostly concerned with whether or not we could even GET up into space, and whether we could survive the trip. Now we've got those bases covered, and we can start looking around.

Kinda makes me wish I could stick around for the next 100 years or so, and see what's going to happen next.

Answer 7

that has alwasy been the case, besides military strategic bases, but our planet is doomed, im going with the end of the world like the mayan calender predicts it in 2012, or so

Answer 8

space exploration is very important to our childrens futures

Answer 9

Yeah... so we can go mess up another one!

Answer 10

somebody out there knows something you and I don't know.