oh i am with you on this. The fact that i plugged Ward's book suggests that i agree with his ideas and hypothesis concerning microbial life being relatively abundant. Getting back to the main topic- Discovery of Exo-planets- it is useful in the sense of mapping charts but the usefulness and need to somehow relate this toward life elsewhere in the universe is rather moot as we possess not the means to travel to or instruments to measure it with what we currently possess and where we are located in the cosmos. Now a discovery of a planet via Radio Astronomy due to a signature or signal- now that is something else entirely and most welcome- Cheers-

What is wrong with skepticism? What is wrong with saying " I don't know " ? I recommend reading Peter Ward's " Rare Earth " . Given the Over-abundant research and data listed in that book, i would say Khipu is rather spot on. Listing the fact that you " Know Scientists " is rather like living in LA and saying you " know some famous people". None of the ones listed in your references are specialists the Astronomical or Geological sciences. I would like to say that, yes, possibly a good chance exists when you think of the Milky Way or our Universe. but when you get into the distances involved and the actual probability of it, it becomes a bit more desolate than one would imagine.