NASA's Kepler spacecraft has discovered 715 more planets in the Milky Way that could be a suitable to sustain human life. Since the first such discovery, in 1995, this brings the total to about 1,700.
"This is very good news indeed," said Biology Professor Carl Sagan of Pasadena CA.'s Cal Tech.
"We've just about trashed the earth. The rapid deterioration of our environment is leading toward a dead planet. So we have to escape the earth. I would say we must leave within the next 90 years or so."
His colleague B.F. Skinner-Brown of the Eco-Psychology Department echoed his gloomy assessment.
"Humans are necro-parasitic by nature. They have sought the complete subjugation of our planet and all species on it. The blowback is obvious."
Skinner-Brown continued, 'We are pushing the ecosystems of the world out of the environment in which they evolved, They will all die. We have to leave the earth."
Cal Tech, M.I.T, J.P.L, N.A.S.A. and D.A.R.P.A. have formed a consortium, backed by Pentagon funding, to study the most efficient ways of leaving the planet for other Milky Way habitats similar to earth.
Physicist Carl Sagan of M.I.T. said that the group would include in its study ways to eventually escape the new planet because "humans are sure to trash it too."