Josef Krebs, who believes our future is not on this fine planet but elsewhere in deep space, sent me this story:

For the first time, astronomers have detected a rocky planet in another solar system that has the most basic and essential conditions needed to support extraterrestrial life.

The presence of Earth-like exoplanets in what is called the "habitable zone" has been predicted for some time, but actually identifying and measuring one was referred to Wednesday as the beginning of a new era in the search for life beyond Earth.

"This is our first Goldilocks planet - just the right size and the right distance from its sun," said astronomer and "planet-hunter" Paul Butler with the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "A threshold has been crossed."

The planet, called Gliese 581G, is quite close at 20 light years from Earth's solar system. It is considered to be in the habitable zone because of its distance from its sun and its size.

I will not lie. I'm fucking impressed. Not only is the rocky planet in the habitable zone, and not that far away from our home, it's also has a jupiter—a living planet as we know it, and we are made from the stuff of the universe, can only appear near the core of a solar system and needs a big and distant planet for protection from the remains (or junk) of the system's early development.

"As we collect more data, we can see the system looks like our own - with an inner clutch of rocky, terrestrial planets and then a big loner like Jupiter further out," Vogt said.

Fine, this is pretty amazing. I didn't think I'd hear news like this in my lifetime. I, as with Peter Ward, thought the conditions for life were very exceptional, very rare. But maybe there is a cosmic imperative in this universe—I'm sure there are other and very different types of universes. If so, if there is a cosmic imperative, then we should not be surprised to find complex life forms on this planet. If this is the case, doesn't it raise another and very serious problem? Krebs, do you know what this problem is? Simple: It's not our planet! We already have and inhabit an excellent planet—here, earth, the third rock from the sun. Why do we think we can just go to another planet and inhabit (colonize) it? Seriously, are we thinking about taking a whole planet from another life form? Let's think about this.