MMeM, Vol.12 Issue 18 – Underwhelmed

Recently, it was announced that the other big space telescope launched in 2009 by NASA, Kepler, discovered 1,284 planets. Excuse me, some reports like to term these as “exo-planets”. “An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet that orbits a star other than the Sun.”

Now, I don’t mean to sound exo-sarcastic, but I guess I always assumed that among the trillions of stars in the universe there was a pretty high probability that there were some big rocks hanging around some of them.

Apparently, since the late 80’s we’ve now discovered around 3,000 planets outside of our own solar system. Wow. I had no idea how truly limited we really are. But, I guess it shouldn’t come as such a surprise since we’re still arguing over whether we have 8 or 9 planets in our system or not.

I don’t know, this just seems so, 5th grade science project like. I thought we were well beyond the shock and awe of finding planets that are so far away we’ll never ever go to them.

I mean, 1,200 planets? Whoo! Wow! I’m so NOT IMPRESSED!?!

• We are part of the Milky Way galaxy.
• It is estimated that there are more than 200 BILLION galaxies in the universe. AT LEAST.
• In the observable universe, as far was we Earthlings can estimate, there are around 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 exo-planets.
• So, if we add the recently discovered 1,284 to the previously logged ~3,000 since 1988 that totals 4,284 discovered exo-planets.
• ….OR a whopping 0.0000000000000000004284% of the possible exo-planets out there.

Yeah, I stand by my original reaction. I’m SO not impressed with this recent “discovery” of 1,200 exo-planets. Woopity-doo. Sorry.