Yeah, orbiting moons are the surest bet for life harborers. And yes, they used the time-tested “star-wobbling” approach to detect this massive planet. That’s why it took 18 years of observations and analysis to determine the existence of this new planet.

I wonder, would Seth and his Seti gang change their searching procedures after this new discovery?

We really do need Interferometer satellite telescopes to try and find a class M rocky planet.

If Nasa told me that the main purpose of tha base they intend to build at the Moon was to put a telescope that would search for Earth-like planets, they would have in me their most inconditional supporter.

Yeah, I know it was just a “gas giant,” but there were theories put forward about moons of these giants possibly harboring life, since they are in that “green zone.”

Also, the discovery was made with ground-based telescopes, and not the COROT platform, even though the space telescope is doing it faster. I suspect that astronomers are using the adaptive optics system that I described in Project Beta to tease more detail out of their images.

Interestingly, the cultural impact of this can be so profound that it has not yet caught the attention of most people.

But we have to remember that most probably that new planet won’t have life of its own (at least not life as we know it) as it is a gas giant, and although Carl Sagan made a pretty good thought experiment trying to imagine what kind of life could flourish on a planet like Jupiter, chances are that the most plausible places for organisms to flourish would be on this new planet’s orbiting moons, just like Europa or Enceladus in our own solar system.

Sadly, we don’t have the means to detect those smaller rocky moons or planetoids… yet.

These are the kind of things I think NASA should focus its resources to, instead of trying to re-create a new “Apollo on steroids” all on its own… If man is ever going to colonize other celestial bodies, it will only be accomplished through international cooperation.