In recent years, observational astronomers have made leaps and bounds discovering planets orbiting other stars, called exoplanets, some of which could host life as we know it. The first exoplanet detections surfaced in 1994 and 1995, according to JPL’s planetquest website. These preliminary discoveries ushered in a flood of planet hunts and successful detections. Now the exoplanet catalogue at exoplanets.org lists 755 confirmed planets and 3,455 unconfirmed potential candidates.
    These numbers may seem disproportionate, but most of the discoveries come from a space telescope mission called Kepler — currently on its last leg — which observes only a small region of our galaxy looking for planets. The results pulled from the Kepler mission show that among the many large planets similar to Jupiter out in the galaxy, there exists a good proportion of planets similar in size to Earth, with similar compositions and possibly the atmospheric and climatic conditions conducive to life similar to Earth.
    The discoveries announced at this month’s Kepler Science Conference come from the small region that Kepler observed. This precision sampling of a small region of space allows astronomers to extrapolate the ratio of stars that should have planets and what sizes and configurations they should come in. According to nbcnews.com, Berkeley astronomer Geoff Marcy reports that of the 40 billion sun-like stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some 22 percent of them should have planets like Earth within their habitable zones.
    The habitable zone of a star is the region where water liquefies, rather than boils off or freezes into ice, so life as we know it can survive. In our solar system, with conditions below freezing, Mars sits on the outer edge of the habitable zone, and with a heavy atmosphere and overactive greenhouse effect, Venus sits on the inner edge of the habitable zone. Fortunately, Earth falls right where water-based life can survive year round in a largely liquid water environment, and planet hunters want to find exoplanets with the same conditions.
  According to nbcnews.com, Marcy estimates there are upward of 8.8 billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy alone, which in the context of the entire universe full of hundreds of billions of other galaxies just like ours means that trillions of Earth-like planets could exist.
   The exoplanet searches ultimately seek to discover if we are alone.  The reasoning goes like this: with so many planets out there, surely several of them will develop Earth-like conditions, and if life formed here, then could it form somewhere else with similar conditions. With a trillion attempts, would life not thrive in such a large universe?
   There are probably hundreds of other life-hosting planets in our galaxy alone. The chances are too high for anything else. This realization should humble us and draw our attention away from our pettiness and strife.  With a universe so vast and a civilization so young, we should take a step back from fighting each other and unite our efforts to advance humanity together.
   Carl Sagan strove to put an end to mankind’s fragility and illibriality as he feared the inevitable destruction promised by war-mongering and short-sightedness. We now reach the point that Sagan mentions in his book “Pale Blue Dot” where we look past our own noses and see the universe for what it is.  
   “Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome universe that utterly dwarfs — in time, in space and in potential — the tidy (man-centered stage) of our ancestors,” Sagan said.
   We would do well to look up from time to time and remember we are not alone in the universe. Amidst international strife and petty conflicts, plenty of people stand up for one group or the other, but in the grand scheme of the universe, who speaks for Earth?