I am sitting here at my computer having just finished a particularly long and tedious shift at the bakery. Making pies and French bread from scratch is a pain to do at home, and doing it at a commercial scale is proportionately more painful.
And then I see the report of a news story that Julia mentioned to me last night: There’s a potentially habitable exo-planet right next door.
I can’t believe the banalities of work made me forget that. Hell, I can’t believe I’m not drunk and celebrating.
There’s so much to be excited about! Gliese 581g is a mere 20 light years away, which makes it about as close as an Earth-like planet could possibly be. "Gliese" is the prefix of a cataloging system for near-earth stars that are too dim to be seen with the eye (most of the galaxy is red dwarfs that are too small and dim to be seen by their nearest neighbors).
The scuttlebutt on the street is that the chance of life is 100%. But that’s just for those of us who subscribe to the panspermia hypothesis.