NASA plans to send astronauts to Mars in the coming decade. “People like pictures, and so spectroscopy never gets its fair due in the general talk about astronomy or science, because it’s slightly more esoteric. “Spectroscopic data is not as appealing to the general public,” Impey admits in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast. Instead, Impey expects that NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope - or one of the giant Earth-based telescopes that’s gearing up for observations - will detect the spectroscopic signature of biological activity in the atmosphere of a planet that’s light-years away from us. And don’t expect to get radio signals from a far-off planetary system, as depicted in the 1992 movie “Contact.” When will we find evidence for life beyond Earth? And where will that evidence be found? University of Arizona astronomer Chris Impey, the author of a book called “Worlds Without End,” is betting that the first evidence will come to light within the next decade or so.īut don’t expect to see little green men or pointy-eared Vulcans. Continue reading “If Rogue Planets are Everywhere, How Could We Explore Them?” Based on their first-ever feasibility analysis, they also indicate that deep space missions could explore these unbound objects more easily than planets still bound to their stars. According to a recent paper by an international team of astronomers, there could be hundreds of rogue planets in our cosmic neighborhood. Other research has indicated that rocky planets with plenty of water on their surfaces could also support life through a combination of geological activity and the decay of radionuclides. Like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, these satellites could have warm water interiors that might support life. Some of these planets may be gas giants with tightly bound icy moons orbiting them, which they could bring with them into the ISM. Periodically, planets are kicked out of their star systems to become “rogue planets,” bodies that are no longer gravitationally bound to any star and are adrift in the interstellar medium (ISM). But more recent observations, theory, and calculations have shown that planetary systems are subject to shake-ups and change. At one time, astronomers believed that the planets formed in their current orbits, which remained stable over time.
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