We frequently hear about some discoveries of exoplanets like our Earth, or of Earth
twins.
How common are Earth-like habitable planets in the universe?
The short answer is we have no idea how common they are because it's at the edge of our technology
to even detect an Earth-sized planet in around a Sun-like star with an Earth-like orbit.
And so we're just at the edge of being able to detect planets like that.
Even once we detect a planet like that, we don't have the technology to determine whether
there's water on the planet or not.
We can't tell whether there are continents, we don't know what its rotation rate is.
And so we're just beginning to measure the very basic parameters of whether a planet
is Earth-like.
Does it have the same kind of orbit as the same size?
And does it orbit a star like the Sun?
So that really doesn't answer the question of how common are Earth-twins.
I suspect over the next 30 or so years we'll develop that technology, and I think what
we're going to find is that there are going to be planets that look increasingly like Earth,
but then it allows us to answer the real question we want is, is there life out there?
And my suspicion is, my prediction is, what we will find is that we'll find planets that
look increasingly like Earth, but there's going to be very little or no life on any of those
planets until effectively you get something that looks almost exactly like Earth, and that's
going to be a sign that God has created life somewhere else as well.
So let's go.