The Goldilocks zone is the comfort zone for planets, not too hot, not too cold, the right distance from a planet to have a stable orbit. It is also in the right temperature belt to have water.

Our civilization has located Gliese 581G, a planet inside the comfort zone.

It would support life. The gravity is about the same as it is here.

What’s the big deal?

From the article in the Christian Science Monitor –

“Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say, my own personal feeling is that the chances of life on this planet are 100 percent,” said Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, during a press briefing today. “I have almost no doubt about it.”

Not only that, we might be able to live there. We might be able to have an interstellar colony. Even if the environment is very different from ours,by the time we are able to get there, our ability to manipulate genetics will enable us to modify humans and others of Earth’s creatures, like grazing animals, to function normally.

Getting there will be tricky. Look at this article from Slate – Gliese 581 g or Bust!

What are the implications for us here on our planet now? If there is one planet capable of supporting life withing twenty light years, it follows that if this is an average distance, one habitable planet to another, our galaxy is crowded with millions of habitable planets.

That’s a big deal.

Out here on spiral arm on the edge of the milky way, we live where the stars are far apart. Imagine dozens of habitable words with one light year of each other as the stars grow thicker toward the middle of the galaxy.

What are the implications for humans, no longer the center of the universe? Many religions have long assumed that this was the only blessed planet, the only place the scriptures explained.

Job 22:12 “Is not God in the heights of heaven? And see how lofty are the highest stars!

Psalm 147:4 He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.

Do the phrases carry more meaning than they did a few days ago?

James Pilant