Welcome to Marklar. I am Marklar!

Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory's telescope in La Silla, Chile, announced yesterday the discovery of a planet outside of our solar system that they believe could be habitable by life as we know it. The planet, named GL-581, is about 50% larger than the earth and five times as massive. It orbits a red dwarf star 120 trillion miles away may have temperatures that would support water, which is scientists agree is a requirement for life.

Our solar system. The new kid on the block.

It was only recently that scientists started to believe that red dwarf stars would be able to host planets that could produce life, and only last year that astronomers at Princeton University had discovered extra-solar planets that are rocky. Before last year, all the extra-solar planets that had been discovered were gas giants, similar to Jupiter.

Looking up from a gas giant.

NASA is keeping a slightly cautious stance on the announcement by the 11 European astronomers, stating that determining the size, shape, and make-up of distant planets is not by any means an exact science.

Still though, NASA does plan to launch a mission next year, called Kepler, to scour the skies for extra-solar planets.

Personally, I think its time to build an interstellar ship, preferably one with a nuclear powered Leonid drive, that would take hibernating humans, or perhaps robots, on a generations long trip to deep space.

I call shotgun!

Of course the problem with those ships is you can never trust the on-board navagation...