Hearing “The Latest Exo-Planet”
When I was young, the idea that we could identify planets orbiting distant stars was a “someday” sort of thing. “Someday, our telescopes will be good enough, our techniques will be refined enough, that we’ll be able to find other planets.” Back then, we only knew of the other planets and planet-like objects that orbited our Sun. We all assumed that there were other planets out there, but without proof, it was just an assumption.
Today, spotting exo-planets is old hat. It seems like not a week goes by when a new one isn’t discovered. At this point, the only headlines we hear are when we’ve discovered the latest in a long chain of “smallest, most Earth-like exo-planet yet!” The fact that we can get jaded about something as incredible as spotting something the size of a planet across a distance that makes the largest planet little more than a mote says something about how amazing our world is.
NIGHTNIGHT by DEDDY
