Over the past twenty years, it is not one habitable exoplanet, but nearly 2,000 exoplanets, habitable or not, which have been identified around more or less distant stars of our galaxy.
Discoveries of habitable exoplanets
The advances of modern telescopes
The discovery of a habitable exoplanet represents in itself a formidable technological feat, made possible by the improvement of current telescopes. Thus are regularly announced the discoveries of "planet-sisters" of the earth, which we have known for some time already that it is the only one in the whole solar system to develop life.
Examples of recent discoveries
Last year, it was Kepler-452B, who revolved around a star located at 1,400-light years and whose newspapers announced that it was a "super-terre"; On August 26, it was Proxima-B, located in the supposed area favorable to the appearance of life around the star closest to the sun, proxima of the centaur, which "is only" 4.25 light years from our home.
Illusions and deceit
All this is admirable, but, beyond the announcement of the discovery, the message implicit to the general public is as follows: since four steps from here, another planet is likely to welcome us, why do we despair of the accelerated destruction of ours?
The illusion of the colonization of exoplanets
It is indeed both a total illusion and an odious deception that to let our contemporaries believe that one day man will be able to colonize a habitable exoplanet. And this for a simple reason: it will have disappeared long before.
Immeasurable distances
Firstly because a single light year represents a distance that is not on the same scale as those applying to the solar system: the exoplanet that has just been discovered is 40,000 billion km, 7,000 times further from the earth than Pluto is.
Travel time
Considering that the New Horizons probe, which flew over Pluto on July 14, 2015 (See this article dedicated to Pluto), took nine and a half years to get there, it would take around 66,500 years to a vessel using the same principle of propulsion to make the trip.
Technological and human limits
Of course, media scientists are already affirming, with the confidence that characterizes them in general, that Man will one day be able to implement a different technology that will allow us to go faster, that is to say at least 1,000 times faster for the case to be conceivable.
The urgency of the land situation
Then, and this is where the problem becomes insoluble, at the speed at which the evolution of humanity accelerates - destruction of nature, exhaustion of resources, overcrowding, not to mention the risk of generalized war - it is highly improbable, to say the least, that a vessel will embark settlers to an exoplanet habitable before our species goes extinct.
Media deception
To headline the announcement of the discovery of a planet, as a priori welcoming and accessible, as it is regularly done Le Monde, Le Figaro or Science & Vie, is more than deception: it is to maintain the most cynical way that is the illusion that there is a "planet B", and this illusion is above all intended to put into perspective the deadlines that humanity will have to face the very short term. Unless everything is done to avoid such an outcome, but nothing seems to show this...