Rapid technological leaps forward in the last 10 years mean mankind is closer than ever before to knowing whether extra-terrestrial life exists in our galaxy, one of Britain’s leading scientists said on Tuesday.

It’s been a fascinating week in the world of astronomy. The article continues:

“Now we know that most of the stars, like the sun, are likely to have planetary systems around them and we have every reason to suspect that many of them have planets that are rather like our earth,” Rees told Reuters in an interview.

He said great strides in space search techniques over the last decade had removed one of the big obstacles in finding other worlds, and possibly even complex life forms, in our Milky Way galaxy of more than a 100 billion stars.

“Indeed, we live in very exciting times,” he said.

What rings in the mind of Baha’is are the prophetic utterances of Baha’u'llah from well over a century ago, which not only assure us that many stars have planets, but that they all do:

The learned men, that have fixed at several thousand years the life of this earth, have failed, throughout the long period of their observation, to consider either the number or the age of the other planets. Consider, moreover, the manifold divergencies that have resulted from the theories propounded by these men. Know thou that every fixed star hath its own planets, and every planet its own creatures, whose number no man can compute.

(Baha’u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u'llah)

It is indeed exciting to observe how the path of scientific discovery re-enforces the Baha’i writings. Next, perhaps scientists will find an Earth-like planet, or discover creatures on these planets, or even change our perception of the word “creatures”? I wait for that day, with eager anticipation.