An extraterrestrial spacecraft lurking in a satellite’s orbit near Earth would be able to see city lights and pollution in our atmosphere. But what if it searched for signs of life on Earth from afar?
This question has great pertinence to those searching for other Earths outside of our solar system. NASA’s Kepler space telescope is among a fleet of telescopes and spacecraft searching for rocky planets similar to our own. Once the size and location of these worlds are plotted, the next step is examining the chemical composition of their atmospheres.
From afar, Earth-like worlds appear as tiny points of light, making it hard to imagine ever finding out much about them. The best we can do with telescope technology at the moment is to examine some atmospheric components of worlds that are larger than Jupiter. But that doesn’t mean we should discount the possibility of ever finding a planet similar in size to our own, researchers say. Telescopes are only getting more powerful.
“We’re trying to think about how to use observations of the Earth itself to understand the kinds of things we’ll be able to do in the future with possibly the next generation of telescopes,” said Robert Fosbury, an emeritus astronomer with the European Southern Observatory (ESO) who participated in the research.
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An extraterrestrial spacecraft lurking in a satellite’s orbit near Earth would be able to see city lights and pollution in our atmosphere. But what if it searched for signs of life on Earth from afar?
This question has great pertinence to those searching for other Earths outside of our solar system. NASA’s Kepler space telescope is among a fleet of telescopes and spacecraft searching for rocky planets similar to our own. Once the size and location of these worlds are plotted, the next step is examining the chemical composition of their atmospheres.
From afar, Earth-like worlds appear as tiny points of light, making it hard to imagine ever finding out much about them. The best we can do with telescope technology at the moment is to examine some atmospheric components of worlds that are larger than Jupiter. But that doesn’t mean we should discount the possibility of ever finding a planet similar in size to our own, researchers say. Telescopes are only getting more powerful.
“We’re trying to think about how to use observations of the Earth itself to understand the kinds of things we’ll be able to do in the future with possibly the next generation of telescopes,” said Robert Fosbury, an emeritus astronomer with the European Southern Observatory (ESO) who participated in the research.