Picture the scene, probably, replicated in thousands of households across Scotland: two people co-operating with the chore of washing and drying the dishes while listening to the radio news. One of the items covered in the news was the University of California Santa Cruz discovery of a planet, orbiting the star Tau Ceti [1], which is ideally placed to support life. My other half immediately greeted this report with a dismissive "what is that nonsense about".