Because I'm Channelling Bandwagon Boy

Nearly half of my blog roll have mentioned this, so let me join the crowd.

Astronomers have found a planet.

Now, some of you may say, this isn't news! Indeed, this isn't the first planet that have ever been found. Plenty of gas giants about the place, so we know the natural physical laws of planet formation are working around the universe. But let me repeat.

The first possibly Earthlike extrasolar planet has been found!

To be honest, don't bother reading more of my entry, just head on over to the linked Bad Astronomy post and read the rest of the deal there, as he explains it more and better than I can.

But I do note that he talks about the possibility of water on the planet. This is not an actual find of water (despite the impression formed by just reading the bolded line), but the right conditions for water to form. And with water comes the possibility of life.

Most of us know that there is a huge likelihood of life on other planets (those of us not biblical literalists at least), so the news doesn't get much bigger than this. And what's more interesting is that, pretty much unlike every science fiction consideration, this will be life as none of us know it. We imagine humanoidal creatures all over the place, but there is no reason to think that that will arise again. That it happened here is more a matter of contingent processes than anything else.

Still, we are a long way away from finding any such life, but we are now one huge step closer.