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Actually, getting to them will probably be the lesser of your worries unless you just want to commit suicide expensively. Ecosystems are complicated, and finding a niche is hard even on Earth where all life has fundamentally co-evolved. Hard in the sense that there are masses of failures, both at the species and the individual level. This will be all the more the case for an entirely alien species (us) on a distant planet with its own evolutionary history.

Even if the lovely fantasy of a perfect human-supporting habitat devoid of competitors were to be found, staying a live long enough to take advantage of it would be a serious challenge as adaptation takes generations to accomplish. Either way, we should expect more than half of the human settlers to die before they reproduce - probably vastly more than half, so we'd have to send huge populations of settlers with a known high probability of snuffing it as part of the deal.

Only on Star Trek are small human communities able to settle stably on alien planets, and that's just because the writers ignore the science.

Before humanity knows we can life off world we should see if we can life on our moon that's quite close in case of a screw up.

You're saying that we shouldn't aim for the stars just yet. That's prudent advice, because they can get pretty warm and the houseplants might die if we tried to live on one.

So you're saying if we ignore science then we can do it, right?

If that's the case, the Government seem like the ones in the best position to get us there.

At last, an exoplanet hunter who is steering clear of those myriad pesky red dwarves with their tight planetary orbits and harsh tidal locking.

Your comment is strangely arousing.

I should point out that both Venus and Mars would be considered to be in the "habitable zone" around our own star.

TBF the authors probably had a bit more detail in the original publication, such as an actual definition of "earth-like", which I suspect was along the lines of "rocky planet with the possibility of liquid water". Fun to think about though.

Venus certainly isn't. Antarctica, Sahara and our oceans are far more habitable than Mars, which realistically is no more habitable than the Moon. Basically a space station with gravity.

I think it's been posited that we could potentially live in a particular part of Venus's atmosphere, in some sort of ridiculously high treehouses, if we were really bored and due to a budgeting error suddenly had an infinity of money to spend.

Down nearer the surface…well, I seem to recall that the Venera probes that managed to land were all fairly quickly crushed by the density of the atmosphere.

I think it's been posited that we could potentially live in a particular part of Venus's atmosphere, in some sort of ridiculously high treehouses, if we were really bored and due to a budgeting error suddenly had an infinity of money to spend.

But that's old-fashioned capitalism and economic thinking. Central banks already discovered we have infinite money, just a finite amount of practical things to spend it on. In a post-scarcity future, we'd have a near infinite amount of resources, and different mediums of exchange. So instead of promising to pay the bearer of £1 err.. £1, it could be lifting 1lb of from surface to space. Which would still give banks something to gamble on based on local gravity rates.

Or, given the number of planets just in the Milky Way, everyone could be offered their own planet in exchange for their labor. Delivery not included, refer to travel & subsisdence schedule and royalty table to understand your earn-out.

But it's fun stuff that SF writers have addressed, amongst others. Like what has value in an interplanetary or interstellar economy, and what would be the exchange rate? Things that are currently scarce wouldn't be. Peter F Hamilton's Fallen Dragon has some interesting themes of value in a post-scarcity and post-FTL future.

Mars has atmosphere of sorts, that can be processed. It even has water. I don't think it can be compared to the moon really.

Gravity is so low on Mars as to make the comparison reasonable: human life on Mars is nothing but a fantasy.

How about, Charlie Clark, Martian Life on Earth ? What are the chances? Be honest now?

Another fantasy for Fantastic Stealth?

Neither Venus or Mars are 'habitable' you are correct. They both, however, lie in the habitable zone of our solar system. Which is, AIUI, defined as they get enough solar radiation to allow liquid water to exist on the planetary surface.

Their human habitability shows just how little that 'habitable zone' designation means. It's a lower bound - nothing more.

Let's not repeat the European exploitation of Americas, or Arabs in Africa moving south. Ethically would it be right to settle without an invite?

It's likely anywhere able to really support life would be teaming with life of its own. Likely the existing plants and animals would only be good for fats, sugars/carbohydrates and maybe protein. They'd likely lack suitable vitamins and amino acids. Even here not all plants or animals can sustain humans, you'd likely die just living on rabbit. Animals here also have differing needs of vitamins, amino acids and things that are toxic.

However, as C.S. Lewis remarked, perhaps the interstellar distances are a quarantine system. We have no evidence that any sort of interstellar travel other than a mostly coasting Generation ship is possible. We need to sort out our own problems here instead of exporting people and their associated shortcomings.

Interesting science.

One day our ancient radio waves will reach them! ;)

If you do the sums, you'll see that the likelihood of our radio waves being detectable even at the nearest star is slim to zero. They might detect our oxygen, water, CO2, nitrogen and industrial pollution via spectroscopic analysis. SETI using radio is pointless unless Aliens arrive at the edge of the Solar system.

I remember when they confirmed the first exoplanet (90s) which means I remember the time when it was unknown if planets like earth were very rare or even unique. I'm not even that old... now we not only take their existance for granted, we know they are pretty commonplace.

How drastically this particular field has evolved in only 20ish years is pretty amazing, many of you have children who are older, when one considers what a huge impact it has on our view of the universe.

Me too! I remember the episode of Horizon from 1996 that dealt with it, "Planet hunters". I still have a digitised copy which I occasionally watch for nostalgic reasons, and it is amazing to see how far we have come.

At the time of that episode, they still had no idea how many planets there were out there, most stars they investigated seemed to have none. Finding the first ones (AFAIR, it was orbiting a pulsar), was a serious event, even though they had no hope of harbouring life.

Now it seems almost every star has some kind of exoplanet, we have so many we need machines to keep track of them, and keep finding more and more planets in existing data.

Getting to them is, however, quite another kettle of fish

It helps immensely to be au fait in the Way of Transubstantiation.

If in doubt, just ask the truly devout in brothers and sisterhoods.

Ah, but how many of them have the pubs open on Sunday? Importance is in the detail.

The universe, and galaxies like our Milky Way are literally teaming with life, Even if only 1% of what they imply actually has sentient life, that's an awful lot still. We just havent found it yet, because let's be honest, humanity is probably the equivilant of a neanderthal in comparison to many other civilisations.

Maybe if a world that was never hit by an asteroid hears us then they will send a big spaceship to pick us up, probably piloted by a T-Rex (not Marc Bolan). Be careful though, it might only accept travelers who are chocolate coated to make a nice snack when they arrive on the new Earth-like world.