The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a field that has gotten a lot of attention, but not much respect. That has finally changed. The most important shift was the discovery in 1995 of planets orbiting other stars. About one in five stars has a planet in the habitable zone, where conditions are favorable for life to form. The existence of so-called exoplanets had been debated since the ancient Greeks. Since we believe life needs a surface (or an ocean) on a planet to get going, finding these new worlds changed everything. The first discovery soon turned into an avalanche of discoveries. With more than 5,000 exoplanets discovered, we now know for certain that statistically speaking, every star hosts a family of planets. About one in five stars has a planet in the so-called Goldilocks zone, or habitable zone, where conditions are favorable for life to form…(READ MORE)

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