Soon We Will Use The Existence Of Life On Other Planets To Avoid Doing Our Homework

“All civilizations that inhabit planetary systems must eventually deal with the asteroid threat, or they will go the way of the dinosaurs. We need to predict in advance when impacts are going to occur and, if necessary, shift the orbits of threatening asteroids. In effect, we must change the evolution of the solar system.”
 — The wording of this call for NASA to establish a better asteroid defense system seems appropriate in light of this week’s discovery of the Earth-like planet orbiting a star near the constellation of Cygnus. Because you know pretty soon it’s going to be like, “Why do WE have to make an infrared survey spacecraft to fly in an orbit between us and the sun to track asteroids that might go unseen from Earth? They don’t do that on Kepler 22-b!”