Not long ago now, there was great excitement when we began to discover signs of potentially Earth-like planets in the theoretically habitable zones around their stars. A number of first followed each other in quick succession, each both more impressive and more fanciful than the last, each revising our estimation on the likelihood of life elsewhere in the Universe.

The trend is only continuing: recent discoveries suggest not only that potentially habitable planets exist in a number of places, but that they may in fact be “plentiful.” Thus, little by little, the odds are improving for the potential of life out there, which, to a degree, is an exciting thing (as long as you ignore the corollary implications for threats, either via other life or in terms of extinction barriers, as has been discussed at length elsewhere).

But perhaps most interesting of all of this is that it’s now very clear that we have been, at best, a curious bystander shining a narrow beam around a very large and dark room: we have barely begun to understand the limits of what surrounds us, or the things which we may encounter there. With each improvement in technology, we discover more, see farther, deeper, or measure better, and so it seems only inevitable that, in the very near future, the odds of life will improve again.