A New Earth?

... from Space.com:

HD 85512b is another super Earth, one that's thought to be 3.6 times as massive as our planet. The alien world is found about 35 light-years from us, in the direction of the constellation Vela (The Sail).

Astronomers announced the discovery of HD 85512b in September 2011. The planet's estimated surface temperature is 77 degrees Fahrenheit (25 degrees Celsius).

This artist’s impression shows the planet HD 85512b orbiting the Sun-like star HD 85512 about 35 light-years from Earth. This planet is about 3.6 times as massive as the Earth is at the edge of the habitable zone around the star, where liquid water, and perhaps even life, could potentially exist. 
Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser




Is it really a surprise that astronomers have found Earth-like planets throughout the Galaxy and even into the far reaches of the universe?  Are we alone out there?  The chances are highly unlikely.  

As I look at the artist's rendition of what another (one of five on Space.com) Earth would look like - continents and all - oceans and mountains I can't help wondering about the possibility of life on it? 

Would there be animals, bugs and hippopotamuses, people?  What would their people be like, if there were people?  Would they have solved humanity's war problem that threatens our own Earth today - even this minute in the Middle East?

What would they say to us, if we would listen?  

If they had the technology to find their way across these 33 light-years to visit us, surely they would have found a way to live peacefully together.  Would their science and technology outgrow a stunted spiritual evolution with political, social and even economic consequences as ours seems to have done.

As I look at this image of another Earth somewhere out there, my imagination sees it as clean, peaceful, habitable with doves and fish, and lions and bears, and people living in love with each other, creatively using their spiritual mindfulness to travel, communicate, and build planet-friendly homes.  

I imagine them living in peace, spending much more of their time singing, dancing, praying, and living lives of unconditional love, honoring their differences - even more than accepting - not trying to change or control another's views and ideas but honoring, valuing their differences, and knowing that the collective growth is in that honoring.  The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Would they have a religion?  I wonder.  If they are spiritually mature, they might have accessed the power of the divine unity which is a power beyond that which we have globally accessed thus far.

There is so much more for us.  There is so much potential in each of us, so much yet to discover and build upon.  We could reach out to each other and try to renew our Earth, clean up our global act here, before company arrives from a neighboring planet.  

And then, if we were able to get there - using a technology that is yet to be discovered - it would take thousands of years, unless we could travel at the speed of light. Then, one wonders might it be possible to transcend our material natures in order to vibrate off the planet, so to speak, to raise our vibrational density at will so that we could "fax" ourselves there.  

Then I thought of Jesus walking on the water, and of Buddhist monks levitating.  So maybe we can do this, afterall.  But, there is one thing I know for sure.  We can't elevate our physical vibration if we're immersed in the saddest, most horrific terrors that our media and world is currently drowning in.

We need to stop everything right now - turn off the television and choose to change.  We need laughter, again, we need love, again.  We need to hold each other under a beautiful full moon, or play in the snow, throwing ourselves onto snow banks and laughing until it hurts. We all need to be like children at play again.  We need to step outside under the night sky and see with awe what we are all part of - this vast mysterious other who is out there.  It is staggering and beautiful, ineffably awesome.  It is there, waiting for us, to come alive, again. 

Then, just for fun, take a peek at this:

or, get carried even further away ...