Are we alone?

Though not in my typical realm of posting (perhaps I'm too politically centric with this blog), I just caught wind of news that the first potentially habitable planet that is similar in size and conditions to earth has been discovered some 20 light years away.

It is an incredible discovery as it points to the potential for life on other planets given that it hosts similar conditions to those on earth which helped make life a possibility here. 

At 20 light years away it might be by the end of my life that we get our first concrete answer to the question of other life out there, but it certainly would be an incredible thing to live to see.

Comments

[Adam]

Hey Denis,
I study astronomy, and I'm going to crash your party and say you'll never live to discover life on another planet.
There's a really interesting equation to this with each step lowering the odds.
First, planets not too close to the sun, with water and not too large (too much gravity) and not too small (shorter life on the active core which shields the planet from radiation.
Second: Odds of life on that one perfect planet, debateable, but reasonable.
Third: that said life is intelligent
Four: window of intelligent life, there's been life on earth for millions of years, but only the last 50 have we been able to emit and receive evidence of life from other planets. Once this window opens, it's inevitable that it is going to close via, war, catastrophe, dying earth, or the eventual explosion of the nearby star.
Five: Assuming that you are constantly beaming out evidence of life on your planet (as we do) and constantly receiving it (as we are trying to do) the chances that the information would cross paths from two live planets at the exact moment they were able to receive information is remote to the point of negligence. As light - in all its forms, (we use it through radio) - is the only means to detect life, you can only see life that happened in the past (as it's taken years to arrive to us) and have no way of seeing in a sense 're-catching' old evidence, sinse it has flowed by earth in a stream of light, never to be seen again.

Plus even if you did, we'd never be able to have a conversation as each part in the dialgue would take 100+ years to arrive to the recipient.