Wandering worlds

"Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?"  

"Yes."  

"All like ours?"  

"I don't know, but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound - a few blighted."  

"Which do we live on - a splendid one or a blighted one?"  

"A blighted one." [Thomas Hardy - Tess of the D'Urbervilles]

I reflected on these words from the Master today, when I was reminded by a @MissFusion tweet about this news story. Hundreds of billions of planets are wandering loose in the Universe. Floating, dark and cold, through the interstellar voids.


Sure, some will achieve a moment's glory. They will wander lonely as - well, as planets - until they are dragged into the gravitational pull of stars and are not vaporised so much as plasma-ised. Others might be incredibly fortunate and end up in some sun's orbit. Some might - in theory - at some point - develop life. It seems a slim chance, but then that's a lot of planets and there's a lot of Time left.


But which is the blighted planet - the one which drifts dark and cold through space, awaiting the Final Judgement of the long, slow drift into Heat Death? Or the one that orbits a comfy star, in the Goldilocks belt, developing creatures that will inhabit it, mine it, exploit it, pollute it, destroy it?

I'm going for the latter being the lucky one, but then I'm not much of a Romantic. Yet I do cling to the hope of redemption. I am no rock, I am no island.