The Final Frontier

Sat, 03 Jun 2006 16:42:39 -0400 by Bull

In the past 10 years, more than 170 planets have been found outside our solar system. Only six others are Earth-types, two of them being in cold regions and four orbiting so close to stars that they are too hot for life.

That is, Life as we know it…

I don’t know if any of you, my Loyal Readers, have noticed, but this type of announcement from NASA is becoming more and more frequent. New solar systems, Sol-type stars, Solar systems, and now - Earth-type planets. Yet all of these stories are buried far down in the pages of your larger papers and ignored totally by smaller rags. Sooner or later some lab-coated geek is going to up and announce that a planet has been discovered that closely resembles Earth-like conditions. I can’t help but wonder if when that day comes if that story, too, will be buried behind doom-and-gloom stories and the latest political scandal.

Despite pulpit screams from the text-thumping preachers and towel-headed mullahs of this planet, our future (long term) is Out There. Among the miriad of planets filling the Universe to overflowing. Nope, I’m not gonna tell you we are destined to be contacted by “Vulcans” or little “Grays”. Hell, I don’t know if we’ll ever meet other intelligent life forms. What I do know is that we will - we must - go out there and we will discover life in some form or the other. Most likely some bacteria or simple plant life.

We are out growing our precious little blue marble in space known as Earth. Eventually we must begin to look up and out as a race. Not many races, but as one, unified Human Race. To do that we must grow. We must grow a lot and quickly. The concept is simple we must grow and go - or die.

Crazy, isn’t it? True though. I, for one, think we’ll make it.

Bull, out.