NASA Scientists: We Are Not Alone

Over the past decade or so, scientists have discovered several extrasolar planets. And while these discoveries are fun, most of these far-off worlds are "gas giants" (like Jupiter and Saturn) located very close to the stars they orbit. So anything that tried to live on one of these worlds would both get vaporized by the nearby star and sink to the planet's core. That's no way to live.

After a while, these extrasolar planetary discoveries stopped being sexy. We have plenty of planets in our own neighborhood (eight real ones and three dwarfs)—we don't want more planets; we want aliens! Thankfully, a team of NASA scientists feels our pain:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Earthlike planets covered with deep oceans that could harbor life may be found in as many as a third of solar systems discovered outside of our own, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

These solar systems feature gas giants known as "Hot Jupiters," which orbit extremely close to their parent stars -- even closer than Mercury to our sun, University of Colorado researcher Sean Raymond said.

The close-orbiting gassy planets may help encourage the formations of smaller, rocky, Earthlike planets, they reported in the journal Science.

"We now think there is a new class of ocean-covered, and possibly habitable, planets in solar systems unlike our own," Raymond said in a statement.

The team from Colorado, Penn State University and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Maryland ran computer simulations of various types of solar systems forming.

The gas giants may help rocky planets form close to the suns, and may help pull in icy bodies that deliver water to the young planets, they found.

Mars can't even say it has water. (Not now, at least.)