The truth is out there. And by out there, I mean 40 light-years away, on one of the seven Earth-like planets that astronomers discovered orbiting a star.
By Earth-like, I mean of course that they are Earth-sized, temperate, capable of having water on their surface and have maps of them made by Rand McNally (a joke you understand if you are 50 or older).
The stunning announcement was made a couple of months ago in the journal Nature and in a press conference at NASA headquarters, where they were still trying to explain that Tom Hanks wasn't really an astronaut on Apollo 13.
"This is the first time that so many planets of this kind are found around the same star," said Michaël Gillon, the lead study author and astronomer at the University of Liège in Belgium.
The rocky planets were found in tight formation around the ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 (the first ultracool dwarf star since Hervé Villachaize). Three of the planets may even have oceans on the surface, which would give any space rockets plenty of landing space, assuming rocket travel hasn't changed since my childhood of the 1970s, when "frogmen" rescued astronauts who returned from space.
This could be a massive moment in space exploration.
"I think we've made a crucial step toward finding if there is life out there," said Amaury Triaud, one of the study authors and an astronomer at the University of Cambridge. It was immediately unclear, though, if by "out there," the nerdy Triaud meant in space or outside his mother's basement.
Triaud was talking about life on the other planets later, though, when he noted that a key is, "if life managed to thrive and releases gases similar to what we have on Earth, we will know." I, for one, am not totally sure I want to go to a planet where they release "gases similar to what we have on Earth."
The seven planets are in a space that is – in space terms – extremely tight. In fact, they're so close to each other that one of the planets continually asks another to quit breathing so loud and to stop chewing with its mouth open.
The excitement was palpable in the normally reserved astronomy community, where the inhabitants normally get loud only when someone confuses astronomy and astrology. But even if astronomers find life or evidence of it, it would take millions of years to travel to the planets.
That means that a one-way trip to one of the planets would take longer than that last visit to your doctor – and would likely be done without the benefit of copies of People or Highlights magazines to kill time.
The good news is that TRAPPIST-1 is a relatively young star that is evolving slowly, more like Clint Howard than Ron Howard. So when our sun burns out, we can launch ships and head to space, hoping to find a nice place to land, live and prosper.
"This is the most exciting result I have seen in the 14 years of Spitzer operations," said Sean Carey, manager of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, apparently forgetting the time Rick in HR accidentally sent a reply to the entire staff after receiving an email complaining about possible sexual harassment.
So to repeat: A star that brings back memories of Hervé Villachaize and Clint Howard could have nearby planets that are gassy, would take forever to reach and might require frogmen to rescue you if you somehow arrived.
Sounds like a typical family vacation to me.
Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.
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