The new orbiting Hubble telescope has just added an alarming dimension to humanity’s concept of our place in the cosmos. Where we once thought we were all alone in the universe, it now appears that our galaxy must be teeming with life. We just went from being on God's arm to being on the edge of nowhere in a tiny galaxy far from the center of our expanding universe.
Recent Hubble photos of distant stars have revealed the presence of planets in orbit around most of them. That means that among the billions of stars we can currently see there must be hundreds of billions or trillions of planets and moons that we can't yet see. If our planet can support life I guess it would only be fair and make sense to suppose a similar planet or Earth sized moon could do the same.
We just lately identified a planet around a far sun which has a water-based atmosphere similar to our own. The major difference between Earth and that distant planet is it is twice our size and much hotter and wetter. Nevertheless, life forms we have living here in our oceans next to thermal vents and lava flows could probably survive there.
Out of approximately 500 planets recently discovered orbiting suns within our galaxy at least one has been determined to have an organic atmosphere similar to ours here on earth, capable of supporting life similar to or identical to ours. Therefore, the odds of another planet besides our own supporting life of some sort somewhere out in the cosmos just switched from zero to infinite.
Can you imagine the about-face all the pretenders to "sacred truths" and their devout followers of "divine inspiration" will need to make to get back in step with this new reality?
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