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Published online 15 February 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.571
Column: Muse
There's no place like home
...but that won’t stop us looking for the familiar in our search for extraterrestrials, says Philip Ball.
In searching the skies for other worlds, are we perhaps just like the English tourists waddling down the Costa del Sol, eyes lighting up when they see “The Red Lion” pub with the Union Jack in the windows and Watneys Red Barrel on tap? Gazing out into the strange depths of the cosmos, are we not really just hankering for somewhere that looks like home?
It isn’t just a longing for the familiar that has stirred up excitement about the discovery of what looks like a scaled-down version of our Solar System surrounding a distant star1 (see 'Solar System match made in the heavens'.
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