NEWS: Many, Many Planets May Exist

Here are an interesting pair of articles to read:

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/extrasolar-03m.html

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/0...vey/index.html

Back to back, they extrapolitively imply the existence of a very large
number of planets. It's not unreasonable to think that a significant
number of these could be habitable. So why aren't we picking up the
extra-terrestrial radio signals? Sheer distance, perhaps? Sheer time
required for life to evolve?

Well, perhaps if not immediately habitable, then a number of them
could be terraformable -- perhaps better candidates than our own
immediate intra-solar neighbors, if not for the tremendous distance
between stars.

Oh well, at least future SETI and space telescope projects now have
another useful metric to scan for -- metallic stars. Perhaps the Webb
telescope will find something.

But if other earth-like planets were indeed detected with reasonable
confidence at a great distance, would it be justification for
increased investigation into new physics in the hopes of achieving FTL
travel to these distant oases?