.So you're saying it'll be like the mother in law stopping by unannounced

What are the ramifications of this here for possible life forms on the planets?

Interesting question.

If we're talking about planets with water, it seems like there would be extreme tidal action that happens regularly but infrequently. So our aliens would either be amphibious or their civilization would constantly get wiped out and have to rebuild.

Crazy. I'd feel a lot better about humanity if we could just wander over to another nearby planet and make ourselves at home.

I bet our aliens would have some pretty intense religions, too. You'd see planets appear in the sky and get bigger, and then your amphibious priests start praying and sacrificing alien chickens and then the planets get smaller again. When some amphibious form of Copernicus starts figuring out the complex orbits and predicting the movements, he gets killed by the amphibious priests who have acquired complete power.

Never say never. With regard to SEEING something, the James Webb telescope will hopefully at least allow us to get a much better feel for what these (and other) exoplanets are like. It's not out of the question that we could fairly definitively say that there's a planet out there that likely has life on it in the next 10-20 years.

As for getting there, that's a much bigger challenge. We're gonna have to find a new form of ultrafast propulsion for that. Doesn't seem likely that it's on the horizon, but we went from not having airplanes to standing on the moon in about 70 years, so you never know.

This is a bit in the weeds, but it's a nice in-depth explanation about why this is important (beyond just being cool):

http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/20...ut-exoplanets/

There's also an AMA going on with the scientists here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/commen...xperts_ask_us/

The propulsion stuff hawking and Co are doing is interesting.

It's gonna have to be fusion of some type I think.

That's what I was thinking.

Now I'm envisioning a completely aquatic advanced life form..

They didn't talk a lot about it, and I can't find any further info yet.

They did touch a bit on the general challenges of harboring life in the system. Despite the abundance of planets in the G zone, most scientists are still doubtful of life as we know it being there. The fact that it's a Red Dwarf system presents problems in itself. They are smaller and fainter. Which makes the planets orbit much much closer. That tidally locks the planets, creating planets where half receives constant sunlight, and the other is in perpetual darkness. Being that much closer to the star also makes the planets more susceptible to solar flares and radiation. Red Dwarfs are usually very active when they're young. Lots of radiation. Computer simulations show that this type of system likely destroys the atmospheres of the planets, which bakes the light side and freezes the dark side of the planet.

But still.... Jeff Goldblum quotes and stuff....

Potentially 8.8-40 billion habitable earth-like planets in the Milky Way alone.

-from NBCNews. Can't post the link but its a great article. Look it up guys.

^Thanks

Here's the entire event today, in case you missed it:

<iframe width="770" height="433" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/v5Xr-WkW5JM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Awesome. Thanks for posting that. Unless I'm a dumbass I can't rep yet, or I would.