The Best Strategies To Identify A Habitable Planet

Of all the towering and imposing dilemmas that plague us, perhaps the most prominent is that of understanding our place in the universe. We often find ourselves looking up at the stars and asking some seemingly inscrutable questions. Are we alone? What else is out there? Who else is out there? These interstellar quandaries serve as the basis for many of our undertakings in space, and our burning desire to understand the universe manifests itself in the biggest goal of them all — finding extraterrestrial life. NASA stands as the prime agent of these exploratory efforts, and they’ve since unveiled a trove of thousands of exoplanets that they believe could harbor life. That being said, the process of actually discerning a planet’s habitability is severely under-discussed, and I thus hope to explore some of the strategies used by scientists that ultimately underscore and enable our search for life beyond Earth.