FINDING PLANETS LIKE EARTH. WHAT GIVES?

Our intrepid scientists are embarking on a mission to find planets just like our own. Why? Do they know something we don't? Anybody who knows even a little bit about Superman knows he was sent here from his native planet Krypton by his father just before the place blew up into smithereens. And what was Superman's father, Jor-El? That's right, a scientist! And why did he pick Earth to send his baby son? Well, who knows really, but that's not the point. These science guys are launching a ship into orbit around the sun to search for planets like our own, similar in size and weight and with an oxygen-rich atmosphere capable of sustaining life like ours.

Sounds reasonable on the face of it, what with our ambition to expand humanity into the stars someday, but there's questions we non-scientists ought to ask of our intrepid planet-searching scientists. Are any of them preparing any escape pods for their infants? Maybe even building bigger spaceships for the whole family to bail on us, sort of like that Space Family Robinson deal from the 1960's TV show? Exactly how bad are things on Earth? Is Al Gore right and we're only a few decades away from the whole world having the same weather as Panama? In that case, anybody who likes to have a snowball fight every so often might be well advised to leave Earth.

But you have to wonder, if they do find some planets similar to our own, wouldn't there be people living there already? And would they be all that receptive to a visit from some scientist's kid, or even worse, a whole family of scientists? No doubt they'd already have their own set of scientists, and frankly, that's plenty enough for one planet. Especially if they've evolved to the same point as mankind, where all of our scientists are basically doing very little in the way of making real scientific breakthroughs, instead having half of them narating PBS and Discovery Channel TV specials about people like Newton, Gallileo, Curie, Salk and Einstein, people who actually accomplished useful things, while the other half earnestly doesn't do anything about our most pressing problems. How would the arrival of these refugee scientists help either race?

And if these planets are anything like earth, then 36,000 of their people will be dying every day from starvation and half of that planet's countries will be fighting wars with one another at any given time for no apparent reason. They will also have a Sahara Desert and a New Jersey, places where a lot of them will live for no apparent reason, defying all logic and the barest instincts for self-preservation. Why would we want to go there when we've got these things already? With our luck we'd stumble upon another planet in the throes of a worldwide economic meltdown and they'd hit us up for a bail out. Who needs another 6 billion mouths to feed?

The better deal would be to try and find a couple of planets that are nothing at all like this one. Planets where the people on them get along and can fill us in that little secret. Maybe try to find a place where they don't invent things like lemon-scented toilet paper and anti-personnel land mines. A planet that doesn't build asbestos-laden buildings and statues of guys on horseback waving swords around. Maybe even a place where famous leaders earn the nickname "The Great" for doing something other that slaughtering, conquering, tyrannizing and stealing? Okay, that one's a stretch, but hey, you can dream, no?

So let these scientists search the heavens. Odds are with all the untold trillions of stars out there in the universe that there's got be some planets similar to our own. It just might be a good idea to have a backup, a Plan B so to speak, so that when we eventually do use this place up we can move there. Or we could get to work improving things around here, maybe spreading some love around, feeding the hungry and fixing what's wrong. Granted, that's not as exciting as going where only Captain Kirk and his crew have gone before, but until we invent something other than the tin cans we ride into orbit around our own planet, we're not going anywhere just yet. Maybe someone can talk some of these scientists into helping out around here until that time comes. They could start with doing something about New Jersey. That would be a good thing to do.