If you didn't make the cut for a trip to the Red Planet on Mars One (which might be a blessing in disguise), why not make your space dreams even bigger and reserve the right to move to Kepler-452b, the newly discovered distant planet that's the closest thing yet spotted in the cosmos to another Earth?
After NASA announced its landmark discovery of the potentially habitable planet a mere 1,400 light-years away earlier this month, a listing by an individual has popped up on Chinese e-commerce site TaoBao -- similar to eBay or Amazon -- that offers an "immigration status ticket" for migration to the newly known planet for a mere .2 yuan, or about $.03.
The private seller, whose name doesn't translate in Google Translate, doesn't mention how any new immigrants to Kepler-452b will travel there in this listing that we have to assume is meant to be tongue-in-cheek.
Still, somewhat surprisingly, not many folks are jumping at the opportunity to reserve the right to be among the first colonists on Earth 2.0 for a mere three pennies.
Perhaps that's because entire species could evolve and die off in the time it would take to get there with current technology, and perhaps even with current conceived technology that doesn't really work yet.
And of course, there's the fact that Kepler-452b is over a billion years older than our Earth, so there's a chance it might not exist or still be habitable by the time a multi-generational starship arrived there.
Still, we're only talking three pennies, people. And you might have up to four other colonists to join you -- that's how many tickets have been sold so far.
