WORLDS BETTER THAN OUR OWN

WE KNOW THERE ARE SUPER HABITABLE PLANETS OUT THERE. WE'RE WORKING ON GETTING A CLOSER VIEW. 

- DAMIEN MARTIN

Not to disrespect our home planet in the Earth issue, but there might be planets out there better suited to supporting complex life. Scientists have identified two dozen of these "superhabitable" exoplanets, chronicled in the journal Astrobiology. Just because these superhabitable planets have many of the right conditions doesn't mean they currently support life, or ever did.

"Thus, when we discuss the possibility of habitable or superhabitable planets, we do not necessarily assume that these planets host life and thus do not address (at least directly) the notoriously difficult question on how, where, and under what conditions life originates) - conditions that might be very different from those under which life thrives," the researchers,  led by University of Washington Schulze-Makuch, Dirk astrobiologist wrote.

But that doesn't mean they don't have anything to teach us. And given that there might be 40 billion terrestrial planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone our best estimate right now is that  there are about 2 trillion galaxies in the it's likely there are many more superhabitables out there, and quite universe possibly several forms of life. The 24 superhabitable exoplanets humans have so far identified are all at least 100 lightyears away, making it extremely difficult to study them. But help might come in the next two decades.

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