The Earth seen from Apollo 17. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
When I came across this question on the Linked-In group for Science Fiction readers, writers, collectors, and artists I was intrigued. The question was inspired by the article “Alien Earth: What it Will Mean To Find Our Planet’s Twin” written by Clara Moskowitz on January 10, 2013 on space.com. In the article Batalha, a co-investigator for NASA’s Kepler telescope a planet hunting mission, talks about the search for Earth’s twin. Batalha is sure that we will find earth’s twin. Since the Kepler telescope launched in 2009, they have found 2,740 planets with varying similar qualities, 351 roughly Earth-sized planets, 58 possible planets, and one “Super Earth” (a planet a little bigger than Earth) that was orbiting a sun in the habitable zone.
I found this article fascinating and the question immediately brought to mind a short story I read last year by Tanith Lee “The House on the Planet” in the2007 edition of Firebirds Rising: An Anthology of Original Science Fiction and Fantasy. The story was amazing, one of my favorites from the collection particularly because it played with the idea of leaving Earth to move to another planet.
What kind of person would choose to move to another planet who knows how far away from everything they know? I would. It’s not for everyone. It takes a lot to move to another place, another culture, without a safety net. But it’s something that I would be interested in doing. The experience of life is a gift. The opportunities it presents for humanity to start over again but with hindsight are tempting. I look forward to the day when it really is an option.
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