Plato the Probe

https://www.buzzfeed.com/kellyoakes/meet-the-british-scientists-looking-for-earth-20?utm_term=.nkwKeEJOB#.fxwAYV3p0

Got a new desktop wallpaper this morning: from a Buzzfeed article
detailing Plato, the new space probe to look for a habitable planet similar
to earth. Love the animation, and the new planet quest. But I do have some
reservations about what might be pay dirt results for us.

The formation of planets results from physical processes, but their evolution often
involves accidents of one kind or another. Was reading just this week that dark holes
are no longer considered to arise from galaxies clumping together, but rather they form
from imploding stars and galaxies form around them. That sounds more like an accident.
Indeed those holes aren't holes at all but aggregates of debris, (like that spot on a
pair of white jeans).

Our own solar system formed from coming together of chunks around the sun, and many
are wondering if water and life-building molecules didn't smash into the planet on a blind
date with fate. So what constitutes a find out there needs to be thought about pro-actively.

And of course - at astronomical distances - we are always looking out into the past. We don't
know what has happened since our observation, (like with cousin Bert who lives in Oregon,
whom we last saw on a wedding picture).

What is even more challenging is how life itself can interfere with planetary evolution. If
dinosaurs disappeared by accident, one could well imagine that extra-terrestrials are closer to 
Worf than Mr Spock. In all seriousness, carbon-based life has a long history of interaction with
itself and its environment, down to climate change today. It made a difference, to itself, and its
atmosphere. Things surely took a quite different turn elsewhere, if at all.

So good luck with that. It is a fascinating matter.