Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "Life is a journey, not a destination." The sentiment applies as much to life on Earth as it does to the search for life beyond it. On Wednesday, a research team led by NASA announced the discovery of seven Earth-sized planets in orbit around TRAPPIST-1, an ultracool dwarf star located nearly 40 light years (about 378 trillion kilometers or 235 trillion miles) away. All seven planets may have liquid water on their surface, and three are located in the exoplanet system's habitable zone, the area that could sustain life, though researchers have yet to find evidence of either. Even if NASA confirms that life exists outside of our planet, it will likely be too far away for Earth's inhabitants to interact with it anytime soon. As the researchers acknowledged in their press conference, discovering life beyond Earth is not the point of looking for it....
