Image: David A. Aguilar/CFA -- Concept drawing of newly discovered planets Kepler-62e and 62f

Superabundant Life!

In numbers incomprehensible
for the human mind, that
mysterious triumph of Nature's
meticulous architecture to digest
much less comprehend,
astronomers have now concluded
based on data sent from the
vastness of our near corner
of the Universe by the discerning
eye of the Kepler telescope
that 8.8-billion (!) stars revolve
in Earth's Milky Way Galaxy
alone, a mere fragment of the
infinite, unknowable Universe.
Evolved and spinning within
the irresistibility of those
countless stars' magnetic
draw, unrealized numbers of
rocky planets causing cosmologists
to ponder the odds of Nature's
building blocks of life and whether
her blueprint does not extend
those odds to infinity. If so,
they puzzle, where are those
other creature-aliens and why
have they not, in a spirit of
common cause and civil politeness
come calling? Might Earthlings'
reputation for disputation and
wild emotions outrunning reason
conceivably have preceded us
into the timeless, distant ether?