That latest Earth-like planet....

Another tidbit of information on something that's beyond our grasp, and that's probably just as well. As a species, we aren't known for our peacefulness, tranquility, nor intelligent use of intelligence.

I can't find my well-thumbed copy of astronomer Paolo Maffei's excellent account of a mythical space flight from here to the outer limits of the known universe, but I recall that in it, he relates an analogy using common objects we're all familiar with, to give us a more easily grasped 'picture' of distances involved. For example, to travel from Earth to the nearest other star system, the binary Alpha Centauri, would be comparable to leaving an object smaller than a sesame seed located, let's say, at Vancouver, Canada, and making our way on a tiny little craft from there to another planetary object orbiting that nearest other star system, and finding that other smaller-than-a-sesame-seed planet at a distance about equal to the distance between Vancouver and Montreal. At the speed of spacecraft which went to the Moon, that trip would take us about 500,000 years, the author says.

So you must forgive me for not getting excited about the discovery of an Earth-like planet orbiting a star 500 light-years away, when even one 4.367 light-years distant is seemingly well beyond our abilities to visit. If asked why everything seems to be spread out and separated from one another by such prohibitively great distances, I'd be inclined to suggest that this is God's way of making sure that we don't interfere with other evolving life forms and contaminate their environments as we've done here. Just a theory, you understand, but it makes sense to me. We haven't met any extraterrestrials yet because they don't need this aggravation.