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> The engineer in me says that it's overwhelmingly likely that there's nothing alive there. Our planet has life in all kinds of niches. Why would an Earth-like

• lucozade 11y ago
  True but all of our planet has an atmosphere conducive to supporting life. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Earth-like planets generally won't support life. I have no idea how many will. It just seems unlikely that the first one found happens to tick all the relevant boxes. Having said that, the fact that they've found one so quickly, relatively speaking, seems like a good indicator that there are an awful lot of good candidates for life-supporting planets. The more there are, one would assume, the more chance that some will have everything in place. But then again, we could just get lucky and hit it first time. Which would be stellar (sorry).
  • sampo 11y ago
    > True but all of our planet has an atmosphere conducive to supporting life. The composition of Earth's atmosphere was pretty similar to Venus and Mars, before photosynthesis changed it to the current composition.