Good article. A couple of years ago I attended a lecture by Janice Voss about the Kepler Mission(
Kepler Mission).
Someone in the audience asked about how many earth-like habitable planets they expect to find. She thinks they will find
hundreds of thousands of them And that's not even including moons. Europa for instance, has a good chance of having a warm subsurface ocean, which is exactly the type of condition likely to foster some form of aquatic life. Considering Jupiter is right "next door" when you consider the cosmic scale, the further we look the better chance we have of finding ET.
Actually on a slightly related note a prominent Astrophysics Professor from John Hopkins outlined why he thinks there is a high chance that civilizations exist out there that have had hundreds of millions years of a head start on us and less of a chance that one exists of approximately the same age. So to an outside observer of one of these civilizations we are basically a planet of unintelligent apes. I'll try to find that link later
Click to expand...