Exoplanets & the Search for Habitable Worlds
Hundreds or thousands of years from now, when people look back at our generation, they will remember us for being the first people who found the Earth-like worlds. - Sara Seager
The question of are we alone has been one that has captured the imagination of humans for at least as long as human thought has been written down, and the imperative follow-up questions seem to come as naturally as the sunrise.
- If we are alone, what is it about Earth and the conditions here that makes us so unique?
- If were not alone, where is everyone else, and what are they like?
It was only in the 1990s that we first discovered planets orbiting stars outside of our Solar System, an incredible discovery after thousands of years of wonder and hundreds of years of searching. In the span of the 20 or so years since, our knowledge of worlds beyond our own has exploded. Gas giants much more massive than Jupiter exist in great abundances; theres a whole class of common planet larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune; and rocky worlds as small as the ones in our Solar System are not only common, theyre extremely common in-and-near the habitable zones of red dwarf stars, the most common and longest-lived class of star in the Universe.
So the planets are there, the rocky planets are there, the rocky planets at the right distances from their stars for liquid water are there and everything seems possible. If our best estimates for these planets are correct, there are literally billions of potentially habitable worlds in the Milky Way galaxy alone, right now .
But how do we take that great leap, the one from potentially habitable to presently inhabited worlds? The first surefire signs of life will come from a technique weve already begun pioneering: probing the molecular content of atmospheres of these potentially habitable worlds.
If the signatures of life are thereand in particular, if the signatures of life that we know to be present on Earth are found therewell not only have our first victory, well have a blueprint as to how to achieve many, many others. But to do that, we need the right equipment for the job. Enter Sara Seager and the brilliant idea that could bring us our first yes with nothing more than currently available technology: the Starshade .
Were prepared for alien life , all we have to do is go out and find it. In collaboration with Perimeter Institute s presently ongoing conference, Convergence , Im so pleased to bring you an exclusive: Sara Seagers talk , Extrasolar Planets and the Search for Habitable Worlds, live, here, on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2015, at 4:10 PM EDT / 1:10 PM PDT. You can watch it live, below, and follow along to the live blog that will be posted here, updated continuously as the talk goes on!
https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/exoplanets-the-search-for-habitable-worlds-d350b0d4f0
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Space exploration, I never tire of reading about it
The search for habitable worlds - the next frontier of exploration
Follow this link to watch the video
Photos and video are great. I love this type of thing.
Good find RIO
Kavika
Glad you liked it, I found it fascinating
Raven WIng
I cannot argue with that noble goal for "we the people" of earth, but I would hope that we can do both, in fact it may end up that we need to discover another habitable planet in order to save earth as we know it.