Water in the Universe

A new planet has been detected around a nearby sun-like star, orbiting at a distance where water would exist in liquid form:

Bad Astronomy -- Astronomers announced today that the star 55 Cancri — known to have had a system of planets for some time — is now known to have at least five planets orbiting it. The existence of a fifth planet was just confirmed.

The new planet is 45 times the mass of earth, making it in all likelihood a bloated giant painted with pastel bands and angry whorls of hydrogen gas like a turbulent Easter egg. While a world of such size and composition would be inhospitable to oceans or life as we know it, any large moons in tow might well be more accommodating.

55 Cancri is a binary system about 40 light-years away in the constellation of Cancer. The companion star of the quintuple solar system is a red dwarf orbiting Cancri A at a distance of about 100 billion miles.

To get an intuitive handle on those formidable numbers, consider that if our sun was the size of the period at the end of this sentence, the earth would be a microscopic dot a mere 2 inches away. On that same scale, the two stars in the Cancri binary would be separated from one another by 50 yards, but reside a whopping 75 miles away from the earth and sun! The fastest spacecraft to date would take about half a million years to reach 55 Cancri. And it's one of the closest stars. Most are much, much farther away. Imagine that immense, pitch-black void, lit only by a scattering of tiny, precious sparks of light swallowed effortlessly in the endless night. For our universe is so big, empty, and dark, it's enough to send shivers up and down your spine