With What Time Is Given

Stepping literally into a different universe from the usual subjects of my posts, this article http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070424/D8ON8OSG0.html, excited my imagination.  The story is that a “short” 120 trillion miles away, that 120,000,000,000,000, there is another planet that may be habitable for human life, with average temperatures between 32 and 104 degrees.  The bad news?  Turns out that 120 trillion miles poses a difficult question of how to get there.  Go figure.  The good news?  Scientists believe that if there is one such planet near a “red dwarf” star, which make up 80% of the stars “near” our solar system, there may be many more.  Also, those suns would last a lot longer than ours.  It may be possible, therefore, to colonize the universe, a dream as old as . . . well, as old as Star Trek anyways.

The current state of space exploration involves trips to the moon or Mars and now private companies getting into “Space Tourism” where for a mere 20 million bucks, you can spend some time in outer space.  Still, it entices the imagination.  Given the threats of weapons of mass destruction, the possible existence of global warming, etc., it might not be bad for mankind to branch out into the universe a bit.