“When we look at these planets’ atmospheres, what we will look at are the chemical fingerprints of what kind of gases are there in the atmosphere. “I can't stress enough how exciting it is that, for the first time, we will be looking at the atmospheres of planets around other stars and find chemical elements that may show some kind of life signatures,” he says. Scientists are also looking at 10 small stars nearest to Earth and exploring what types of gases these have in the atmospheres, made possible by the James Webb Space Telescope. Water is one of the most critical and fundamental chemical elements that humans would really need to survive outside of Earth, which is what scientists also look for. So that's one good candidate, and there are several nearby planet candidates that we are going to explore,” he says. “There is a planet in the habitable zone of that star - it's just four light years away, which means that if you shine a light towards that planet system, it will take four years to reach it. One of these is the nearest star to us is called Proxima Centauri. He says there are some nearby potentially habitable planets that are good targets for scientists to study. The approach follows scientific principles and physical laws, builds a hypothesis and determines if it's possible to detect with existing technology or the technology of telescopes that would be able to be built in the future.” For example, they could build megastructures around the planet to harness the energy of the star, they could have big structures orbiting around the sun that we could detect by because they block the sun's light.” “If you want to imagine a technology that's even further ahead, centuries ahead of us, it's only limited by our own imagination. Others may include radio signals emanating from the planet itself. These could be ones similar to Earth, like industrial pollution, or city lights on the night side of the planet. “Techno signatures are signatures of technology on a given planet, and there are various types of types of technological signatures we are looking at,” he says. Scientists are looking for “techno signatures”, which are like biosignatures or signatures of biology on a planet. He believes we are in a golden era of exploration and for the first time in human history we have the technology to find life on other planets. And this is an exciting time because we have so many of them out there and we are trying to build a telescope and observe them to see if any of them can are inhabited.” It could be any kind of life - it could be microbial life, or bacterial life, or even technological life as well. We are trying to find life on those planets. And we now know more than 5000 around other stars. “Just to give you an idea, in our solar system we have eight planets around the Sun. “So far, we have found 5000 exoplanets, planets orbiting other stars,” Kapparapu says. However, exoplanets may offer better conditions. There already exists a machine to produce oxygen on Mars, but that would produce the equivalent that one tree would. If we can develop technologies for human survival, I think it is a good place to have some sort of a human presence.” So, one has to adapt to this lower gravity. First of all, the gravity is different - it’s lower gravity. The one thing I would say, that is that Mars is not Earth. I think that would be a good place for a human living area. “If there are enough protections for human survival on the Martian surface for habitats to be built up. Mars is the best contender for a planet near to Earth that could sustain human life, Kopparapu says. “So if we can have the technology developed for the Moon, we could probably do that for Mars as well.” “I think NASA does have some plans to explore Mars as well,” he says. It intends to land astronauts on the lunar surface. The Artemis 1 moon mission has been delayed until mid-October this year, but its eventual launch too will signal a new era of space exploration. So, this is just a harbinger of more unusual discoveries that we will be seeing coming up.” “This is the first time humanity has detected a chemical gas outside our planet, in or around another star. “In the past week the James Webb Space Telescope that NASA launched discovered the first evidence of carbon dioxide gas on an exoplanet - a planet orbiting another star. “We have an exciting new big telescope up there beaming down really good, really sharp images of the universe," he says. Planetary scientist at the US Space Agency's Goddard Space Flight Center, Ravi Kopparapu, tells Nine to Noon this year will be remembered as a landmark one in understanding space.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |