I know this is slightly off of the topic that Jim Green initially began,
but with the Kepler Mission approved by NASA (this past December) for
launch in 2006, the search for habitable extrasolar planets should get a
boost. Whether there are any inhibited planets is another issue altogether.
So here is a bit of self promotion. Since I am on sabbatical this semester,
one of my projects is to work at adding to the simulations at my
Interactive Science Activities on the Web (ISAW) site. With the permission
and assistance of David Koch, deputy principal investigator for the Kepler
Mission, I have put online a simulation of finding exoplanets by the
transit method which Kepler will use. There are only three stars active at
this time, but the simulation is otherwise essentially complete.