NASA is reporting that they've found a new planet, larger than Earth, but about the same temperature. Not up on the details but assuming it pans out I find this strangely exciting. It's difficult to imagine how we would ever get ourselves to Kepler-22b, or whether we should even try, but I would be extremely interested to see whether life will evolve under similar circumstances to similar forms. Lots of what makes us life has always seemed arbitrary - although of course it may well not be. Why store genetic information in DNA and not some other stable polymer? Why choose adenine as our major carrier of phosphate energy bonds? etc.
Actually my hope was always that we'd find "life" in unexpected places that was so foreign that just the act of recognizing it as life would radically alter our sense of what life is.
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