Tuesday, July 15, 2014

NASA is closer to finding another Earth than ever before


James Webb Space Telescope


There’s good news for those of you who believe that there’s extraterrestrial life somewhere in the vast immensity of the universe, top NASA scientists agree with you. Even better than that, apparently NASA is “very close” to discovering another earth-like planet, closer than it’s ever been before.


At a panel discussion on Monday, Former astronaut and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden set the tenor of the hour-long conversation about how NASA planned to look for life on other planets in his introductory remarks. “Do we believe there is life beyond Earth?” he asked. “I would venture to say that most of my colleagues here today say it is improbable that in the limitless vastness of the universe we humans stand alone.”


Seated on the panel were some of NASA’s top scientists, which included Ellen Stofan, NASA’s chief scientist; John Grunsfeld, a former astronaut and NASA’s associate administrator; John Mather, senior project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope; and Dave Gallagher, director of astronomy and physics at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.


Most of NASA’s attempts to find extraterrestrial life have been directed at areas within our solar system, especially Mars, but recently there have been major, ongoing efforts to find life on planets outside of our solar system. According to data collected by the Kepler Space Telescope, launched in 2009, scientists now estimate that nearly every star in our galaxy has at least one planet circling it.


The launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in 2018 will grant scientists the ability to determine whether any of those billions of planets have the right chemical fingerprint to suggest they harbor life. Specifically, they are looking for gases in the planet’s atmosphere that could only be produced by life. Read more about this story here.


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