http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-telescope-confirms-alien-planet-habitable-zone-162005358.html

Time to send the Kardashians and the cast of Jersey Shore on a trip?

Look at our earth's history, and the small window that intelligent life has been here. Now imagine the small speck of a hope to find not only a life-habitable planet, but finding it at a time that intelligent life has actually developed there.

No doubt it exists or has existed or will exist on other planets. Nil chance that our human species will actually make contact...not before we get dinged by an asteroid or blow our planet up.

This might take an atheist mentality such as mine, but does anyone consider how "alien" life really wouldn't be that different? The whole universe is made up from the same elements, so life just depends on the specific environment at hand. Earth may very well have been infested with life from long ago asteroids carrying organisms from parts unknown. And here we are, not just lucky enough to be born in a strong, viable country, but lucky enough that we formed from matter on a habitable planet from matter that already formed intelligent life that we've benefited from. Of all the trillions of places in the universe, matter here on earth during a good time formed us. It's semi-amazing to me that I'm not a dusty rock on a dead frozen moon 200 light years away.

Hell, we should be trying to find ways to research these kinds of planets with drones. There's far more to be learned about the universe by studying those areas than there is by studying places that are similar to Earth.

Sure, but the Goldilocks planets we've found so far would take literally thousands of years to reach.

For any craft to reach these places within a human lifetime they'd have to be traveling close to the speed of light.
A dust particle hitting a craft going 1/10 the speed of light would impact with the force of a nuclear bomb.

Then there's the issue of fuel....

/I have a GED in astrophysics and have been known to drink and exaggerate...but I'm not that far off

Sure, but the Goldilocks planets we've found so far would take literally thousands of years to reach.

For any craft to reach these places within a human lifetime they'd have to be traveling close to the speed of light.
A dust particle hitting a craft going 1/10 the speed of light would impact with the force of a nuclear bomb.

Then there's the issue of fuel....

/I have a GED in astrophysics and have been known to drink and exaggerate...but I'm not that far off

but what about relativity?

As long as we are around, we will continue to advance. There's no limit to what we can accomplish in this Universe, as long as we don't limit ourselves.

That's the hitch though...we won't be around long enough. If an asteroid doesn't take care of things first, the religious driven mentality of some crazy dictator will, as soon as he gets his first brand new shiny nuclear weapon. Ironic how the lack of understanding of our existence is actually what could end any hope of finding it.

I think we're missing the point here. We can argue about how long it would take to get somewhere or how far we are from understanding a means of travel that would make long distances possible.....but this is about a more fundemental issue. Is there life out there. Most scientists think there has to be and finds like these are the steps along the way to proving it. This is great science!!! It may not be possible to get there right now but shit, we have found places where life is possible...a huge step! I don't know if we will know for sure before I die whether there is life our there but I'm sure there were people saying just that about all kinds of discoveries throughout time. "Man, I don't think we will know for sure before I die whether the earth orbits the sun but..."

One day we will know if we are here long enough. This is exciting stuff.

Agreed, well said.

It's possible that Einstein's theory of relativity isn't correct. Researchers in Switzerland may have accelerated neutrinos beyond the speed of light.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2393444,00.asp

There are doubts about this, and there's still a lot of research to be done, but the possibility is there.

Still, Ed's right about the problems that can arise from traveling that fast. Running into a single particle would release an astronomical amount of energy.

The greatest chance to achieve deep space travel that we know of at this time is the possibility of a warp drive, which would essentially bend the universe around a ship and keep it enclosed in a bubble, so there wouldn't be anything to run into at all.

Still, that requires a massive amount of energy (as a comparison, they say all of Jupiter's mass converted to energy) to accomplish. That's not to say that we won't discover a way to create energy like that in the future.

Scientists say that it will be "millennia" before we have the technology to accomplish something like that, but I find that hard to believe. Our advancement in technology pushes on at an exponential rate, and I don't think there are any limits to what we're capable of.

As long as we are around, we will continue to advance. There's no limit to what we can accomplish in this Universe, as long as we don't limit ourselves.

Do you mean non-likely to happen, or non-likely to be destructive if it does happen?

Either way, it's likely to happen a hell of a lot sooner than humans making contact with life on another planet. All the current tactics to deflect or avoid an asteroid are quite flawed so far. It's still a tall task to come up with something reliable.