The days' big news, of course, was the second Earth. This was the discovery of the first "Earth-like" planet outside our solar system.
image: Joseph.Stueffer
The inglamorously named "581 c" is circling the red dwarf Gliese 581, and has awakened immediate astronomic interest in the plethora of other local red dwarfs. Based on the rough data gleaned by the European Southern Observatory's telescope in Chile, it's thought to be 1 ¬? times Earth's size. It may be rocky, may have liquid water, and may have an atmosphere. It may also, just conceivably, be the home of our remote descendants.
More immediately, it provides us here and now with confirmation of what has been generally believed to be the case but has, until this generation, been imposssible to demonstrate: that the Solar System is no aberration in the Milky Way, that gas giants are not the only regularly occurring form of accretion around stars, and that rocky, water-bearing, reasonably temperate inner planets may form just as frequently out there as they do here. 581 c also makes it that much more likely that, as Earth is not alone in the Milky Way, neither are we.
image:Jack000
This discovery is headline news today, forgotten tomorrow. But that makes it none the less significant. With the introduction of 581 c we open the door on a new era -- only by the slightest crack, but one can see the light -- in what might be called our cosmic potential. The plausibility of extraterrestrial organic life is a little greater today (intelligent life is another issue); the prospect of human colonization beyond our homeworld a little less like fantasy. Gradually, life is expanding.