A Trillion Worlds

Which is to say that we need to start building interstellar transport vessels soon.

However, it's super cool to note that we've actually directly imaged expoplanets orbiting around their stars in other planes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_directly_imaged_exopla...

Another possibility is detecting planets by the wobble that they introduce in the star's position. I'm not well read on the subject, but I wonder if Gaia's position measurements via parallax are accurate enough for this.

EDIT: A bunch more information from Wikipedia on detection methods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_detecting_exoplanet...

The space-based observatory Gaia, launched in 2013, is expected to find thousands of planets via astrometry, but prior to the launch of Gaia, no planet detected by astrometry had been confirmed.

About half of nearby stars that we can observe[0] have planetary make up that is different than our own Sun. By definition, the rest either have a make up that is like our own or not like our own. So let's assume that every single nearby solar system looks exactly like our solar system, we are just unable to detect that they are at this time. That still means that our solar system is distinctly different than half of the other solar systems. That ratio of difference will never go lower, it'll always be "The solar system is different than at least 50% of other nearby solar systems". But after we do more observations, it might be 60%, 70%, 80%, etc.

Or in other words, as the original commenter said, "It is certainly possible that the more we study the rarer it will become. (It can't really go the other direction at this point.)".

[0] - FTA, "Of order half of nearby stars have at least one (and often several) worlds with masses substantially greater than Earth and orbital periods ranging from mere days to weeks; in our system, the space interior to tiny Mercury’s 88-day orbit is entirely empty."

But I feel confident in saying, having watched the debate about the Great Questions for a couple of decades and seen at least the last ~150 years of it, and seen how firmly the default science position has entrenched itself on the hill that the Earth is completely not special [1], it's enough to falsify that position. And that's a big deal on its own.

Is it possible the Earth is just a 1-in-10000 special case? Sure. But even that is enough to open the door to the question why that is, instead of the question just getting shouted down.

[1]: For a modern day manifestation of this idea, consider how casually it is accepted in the "default scientific worldview" that it is very likely that we will find life in the Solar System, and virtually certain we will find it in the rest of the Universe. I'd submit that a rational look at the data gives you no reason to expect life in the rest of the Solar System at this point, with a lot of reasons to expect it won't happen, and I'll be generous and say that we simply have no data about other solar systems. (A less generous jerf would point out that to the extent we have data, it certainly seems negative for large-scale civilizations, which means all the data we have is negative, but I will concede that's somewhat weak for various reasons.) This confidence does not stem from evidence, or even any particularly well-backed scientific theories. It comes from the history of the debate over the Great Questions, and the general trend/desire to ensure that nothing is special about Earth, because the default science worldview would very much like to stuff the commonness of life and the non-specialness of humanity in the religious people's faces.

You'll note I keep carefully referring to the "default science worldview", rather than simply saying "science", because I do not believe the two are the same. The default science worldview takes a number of steps that science qua science can not actually justify. Coming from me, this is merely an observation, not a criticism, since I believe any worldview has no choice but to step beyond science qua science, because "real science" underspecifies the universe by quite a bit.