Amid blanket media coverage of what will be one of the longest election campaigns in Australian history, it's not an inappropriate moment to lift our gaze from politics and policy and reflect on the news that we are perhaps tantalisingly close to answering one of humanity's greatest questions: are we alone in the cosmos?
Quite possibly not, judging by the surging number of discoveries of exoplanets – as potentially life-supporting planets outside our solar system are called. The latest finding of 1300 exoplanets by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope represents the single largest collection of exoplanets ever found.
Advances in telescope technology should enable scientists to discern the atmospheric make-up of at least some of these remote and mysterious realms.
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