Good news from space:

NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the "habitable zone," the region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface.

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  • NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

Though it has a star that's like ours, the planet's composition (gas, liquid, hard) is unknown. But if it is mostly hard, has water, and dry land, it might have something like a Africa. And if it has surficial life and something like our Africa, intelligence might have a chance in this world. If our planet is the best measure of all things, then we can say this with scientific certainty: A world must have a continent that is shaped like Africa for the door of intelligence to be opened. The shape of Europe will not do the job.