Well, how about this bit of news?

NASA announced it has discovered a planet that looks a good bit like Earth, orbiting a star that looks a lot like our sun.

The space agency has been hunting for this kind of scenario for decades. It means — maybe, possibly, potentially — that the planet, known as Keplar 452b, could be hospitable for, um, life … perhaps even as we know it.

That’s the good news.

Here’s the bad news: Keplar 452b is 1,400 light years away. How far is that? Well, a light year is the distance light travels — at 186,000 miles per second — in a single year. So, it’s 1,400 light years out there. That means, quite clearly, that we cannot get there.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/nasa-discovers-earth-like-planet-orbiting-cousin-of-sun/ar-AAdnQPj

Nor, one can assume, can they — if there is a “they” on Keplar 452b — can get here.

Then again, maybe they have come here and we don’t know it.

OK, I get that it’s not likely. Astronomers think the planet is in its rocky stage, which is a precursor supposedly to entering its “greenhouse” phase.

Still, this discovery is quite exciting.

I’ve long thought that the statistical probability is just too great for there not be life somewhere in our universe, given the known numbers of galaxies, solar systems, stars, planets and other orbiting celestial bodies out there.

How many gazillions of them are out there? Too many to discount the probability — let alone the possibility — of life.