“Exoplanet Census Suggests Earth is Special After All”

Maybe Earth isn’t just a run-of-the-mill planet in an ordinary solar system revolving around a mediocre star in an insignificant place in a typical arm of an ordinary spiral galaxy:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exoplanet-census-suggests-earth-is-special-after-all/

I do, by the way, disagree with the author’s assumption — a very common one, and the one with which I grew up — that Copernicus removed us from our privileged place at the center of the Universe.  Anybody who knows ancient natural philosophy will understand that our position wasn’t understood to be central so much as low.