Life in the Goldilocks Zone....

"Well, the big (really big) news this week is Kepler has discovered a planet which is right next door. AND, it might be in the Goldilocks Zone." 

Nothing political in this one folks. Sorry. This is about an orbiting space observatory called Kepler. The main purpose of Kepler is to find planets. Why? To see if any are "rocky" like Earth, or gas giants like Saturn or Jupiter. And (this is a big one), if we can get enough data using Kepler to determine if any of these planets lie in the Goldilocks Zone.

Well, the big news this week is Kepler discovered a planet which is right next door. AND, this new planet might be in the Goldilocks Zone. Just as a refresher, Astronomers call the area in a star's orbit the Goldilocks Zone if it is not too hot (like Mercury) and not too cold (like Pluto). In other words, it has to be just right to possibly support life.

This new planet (called Proxima b) is just  hair over 4 light years away. Or, 25 trillion miles, give or take a few billion. Not to sound like Dr. Rain Cloud once again, but so what? The last time I checked, for mankind to build a rocket which would travel 4 light years each direction, would take our space shuttle (if we got one out of moth balls) about 300,000 years or so to go round trip. Even if we had the technology to fly at the speed of light, the round trip would still take over 8 years.

Plus, (and this is REALLY a big one), life in the Goldilocks Zone is much more complicated than just the location from the star a planet is orbiting. For example, the 23 1/2 degree tilt Earth has allows us to have seasons. Our molten metal core allows the Van Allen Belt to exist which protects us from harmful solar radiation. Our Moon is instrumental in stabilizing the Earth's rotation, thereby minimizing climate change.

Kepler has discovered over a hundred other possible planets. Only these are many, many light years away. I will get back to my basic question - so what? We will never be able to visit any of them unless we learn how to master Einstein' theory. That theory being space can be "bent" thereby allowing interstellar travel.

What would I like to see in my lifetime? I would much prefer doing something which is more realistic with the technology we now have. For example, I like us to go back to the Moon. And I would like to see a manned trip to Mars. I think there is a whole lot of science out there, just waiting to be discovered.