Interstellar: Is the Earth Rare, or Common?

Editor's Note : With the release this week of Christopher Nolan's blockbuster Interstellar , dealing with the prospect of colonizing worlds beyond our planet, we are pleased to inaugurate a new series at ENV, and welcome a new contributor. Daniel Bakken is anengineer who teachesastronomy at the college level, and an entrepreneur in compound semiconductor crystal growth. In a series of articles he will critically examine recent claims about exoplanets beyond our solar system, asking whether our...