Earth Day? How About Alien Earth Day!

With all the hullaballoo going on down here on Earth - and so much of it sequestered in Washington's 68 square miles - it's easy to forget that there's a whole Universe out there. But sometimes our neighbors remind us of things bigger than just us.

The European Southern Observatory has just announced that they discovered a planet orbiting a star about 20 light years away. Most planets discovered in the past decade have been swollen, hot, monsters, but this one is the smallest yet: it's only 5 times the mass of the Earth. It has a diameter only about 50% bigger, too. If you were standing on the surface you'd weigh twice what you do here.

But it gets better, a lot better. The planet is pretty close to its parent star, only 11 million kilometers out (that's about 6.5 million miles). But the star is a red dwarf, cooler than the Sun. When you do the math -- OK, when someone else does the math -- you find that the temperature of the planet's surface should be between 0 and 40 Celsius -- about 30 to 100 Fahrenheit.

If you still don't get it, I'll be clear: that means water would be a liquid on this planet

Currently, Earth is the only planet we know of in the whole Universe to have liquid water. We think there might be some underground on Mars, but we're not sure. There might be an ocean under the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa, but again we're not sure. Frankly, we're not sure there is liquid water on this new unnamed planet, either, but hey! It's the first time, ever, we've even had a candidate planet with liquid water orbiting an alien star!

If you didn't do well in biology or astronomy in school, I'll make this part clear too: as far as we know, water is necessary for life. We don't know if there's life on the planet of course. We don't know if there's life anywhere else in the Universe. But we just got a wee bit closer to finding it.

So in astronomical circles this is HUGE news. But it's big in the everyday world too. I've said this here on HuffPo before, but it's worth repeating: we get mired in the garbage of politics, and it can be draining. But remember that there really is a Universe full of delights out there, and it may be full of planets like ours. I don't know if there is anyone else out there looking back at us -- frankly, I doubt it -- but just knowing that there might be a planet out there, right around the corner cosmically speaking, that looks even a little like Earth... well, it makes our own affairs seem a little bit easier to take.

Image Credit: ESO