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NASA

How NASA Could Find Evidence of Life on Another Planet Within 25 Years (washingtonpost.com) 43

Posted by EditorDavid from the truth-is-out-there dept.
"In all likelihood, in the next 25 years, we'll find evidence of life on another planet..." begins a new essay by author Dave Eggers in the Washington Post.

"In more than a dozen conversations with some of the best minds in astrophysics, I did not meet anyone who was doubtful about finding evidence of life elsewhere — most likely on an exoplanet beyond our solar system. It was not a matter of if. It was a matter of when." [A]ll evidence points to us getting closer, every year, to identifying moons in our solar system, or exoplanets beyond it, that can sustain life. And if we don't find conditions for life on the moons near us, we'll find it on exoplanets — that is, planets outside our solar system. Within the next few decades, we'll likely find an exoplanet that has an atmosphere, that has water, that has carbon and methane and oxygen. Or some combination of those things.

And thus, the conditions for life. In a few years, NASA will launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which will have a panoramic field of vision a hundred times greater than the Hubble Space Telescope. And on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope — we'll call it Roman from here on out — there will be a coronagraph, a device designed to perform something called, beautifully, starlight suppression. Starlight suppression is the blocking of the rays of a faraway star so that we can see behind it and around it. Once we can master starlight suppression, with Roman and NASA's next astrophysics flagship, the Habitable Worlds Observatory, we'll find the planets where life might exist.

To recap: For thousands of years, humans have wondered whether life is possible elsewhere in the universe, and now we're within striking distance of being able to say not only yes, but here.

And yet this is not front-page news. I didn't really know how close we were to this milestone until I visited the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., on a hot and dry day in June...
Eggers' article is part of an ongoing series called "Who is government?" (For the series Michael Lewis also profiled the uncelebrated number-crunchers at the U.S. Department of Labor, while Casey Cep wrote about the use of DNA to identify the remains of World War II soldiers for America's Veteran Affairs' department's.) But this week Eggers wrote that the work being done at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory "is the most inspiring research and exploration being done by any humans on our planet..."

"No billionaires will fund work like this because there's no money in it. This is government-funded research to determine how the universe was created and whether we are alone in it. If NASA and JPL were not doing it, it would not be done."

Eggers emphasizes later that "doesn't mean it's intelligent life, or even semi-intelligent life. It could be bacteria, or some kind of interstellar sea cucumber. But whatever form it takes, we are close to finding it..."

How NASA Could Find Evidence of Life on Another Planet Within 25 Years More | Reply

How NASA Could Find Evidence of Life on Another Planet Within 25 Years

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  • There has been tons of money in UFO "research", convincing people that there is extraterrestrial life, etc.

  • Always going to produce the answer in 30 years time?

  • doesn't mean there is any to find.

    • This was exactly my first thought. Now, me personally truly believe earth is not singular in this aspect, but my belief, or other's aren't proof that there must be. And the headline kind of makes the point that it's just a question of time before it is found, hence implying that it must exist and we just haven't found it yet.

      I wish people could stop with the catchy phrases disregarding their validity. Example during an event in this town, they claimed that "Littering during [event] costs the city [such and

    • doesn't mean there is any to find.

      You noticed that, eh? He just implicitly assumes it's there to be found.

  • "is the most inspiring research and exploration being done by any humans on our planet..."

    I think the most inspiring research is the one done right here on this one and only home we (still) have.
    It's nice to learn about the origins and what's out there and all, but if we don't understand what's going on right now with what we have and what we're doing to it, it's less important.

    Then again, it's less glamorous and imaginative, and it forces us to face our responsibilities and consequences.

  • Where even scientists are allowed to have faith.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dmay34 ( 6770232 )

      We actually have more direct evidence for a creator god than we do aliens.

      • Citation required

      • Wow. They really got to you as a kid, didn't they?

        Churches. Not even once.

      • evolution disproved the creation story in the bible


        which means Adam & Eve NEVER existed
        which means NO original sin
        which means jesus NEVER existed


        every museum of natural history in the world is a warehouse of evidence proving evolution to be a true fact


        what do religious nuts have?
        a dusty old bible written by goat molesters


        All gods are mythology
        All holy books are fiction
        All religions are bullshit

        • You can't argue with the faithful; anything you 'disprove' in the Bible is allegory, at least until you've left the room then it's literal again.

      • Um no. Evidence is a God entity saying "Howdy!" to the world and removing all doubt. Voices in the head don't count Hallucinations that happen while the brain is shutting down during the process of dying is not evidence. Nor do I count any artifacts which are very sketchy at best. Let me know when that "Howdy!" is coming because so far it never happened, certainly I've never heard it.

        • >Hallucinations that happen while the brain is shutting down during the process of dying is not evidence.

          Actually, we've flipped that one. It's now evidence AGAINST God, since we've learned how to trigger it at will with a magnetic pulse to the brain and are in the beginning stages of understanding how it works.

          So anytime you want to see the tunnel, the bright light at the end, the friendly face, and feel that feeling of peace... go talk to a neuroscientist with some idle lab equipment.

      • 'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing.' 'But, says Man, the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.' 'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and vanishes in a puff of logic.
    • People are struggling to keep food on their plate. We have a apocalyptic level mental health crisis in America which we "never have enough funding" to try to correct. And there are far more items on that giant laundry list But we have money to throw at finding space aliens. Uh, OK. I think ET can wait while we try to get our house in order.
      • So NASA should be working to fix mental health issues rather than directing their efforts at their core competence? I don't think you've really thought this through.

      • People are struggling to keep food on their plate. We have a apocalyptic level mental health crisis in America which we "never have enough funding" to try to correct. And there are far more items on that giant laundry list But we have money to throw at finding space aliens. Uh, OK. I think ET can wait while we try to get our house in order.

        If we correct all the ills of humanity before ever doing any scientific work, we will neither get any scientific work or correction of our ills.

        I always wondered how Americans are presumably starving while there as so many ways for them to get food either free, or ad drastically reduced price.

        And anti-depressants and even anti psychotics are so mainstreamed now that they are actively trying to get as many people on them for life.

  • SETI: "No REALLY! We'll find in in the next 25 years! Pinky swear!"

  • Most of us want for that to happen. Alas, we still do know what it is that reality has in store for us in this respect.

  • A more correct statement would be that within 25 years, we'll be in a position to detect life if it exists within an X lightyear radius. That's still speculative, but doesn't commit the sin of promising something predicated on an unknown.

  • Pie in the sky, head in the clouds stuff is fine at a small scale, but when it starts to eat billions, it's no longer fun and games, it's real money and time that comes at the expense of other things.

    Pure science obviously has some value for society at large, even if it's just as a training ground for smart people who cut their teeth staring at the stars and then go on to do real things in their real lives. But throwing tens of billions of dollars on a very niche thing like resolved images of exoplanets see

  • Reality vs. Fantasy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Sunday September 22, 2024 @09:27AM (#64807401)

    The speed of light is a bitch. In practical terms, it means nobody on Earth will ever visit a world that orbits a star other than ours. We may find microbes living under the surface of a moon of Saturn or something, but as far as complex life goes, Earth is it for life around the Sun.

    We have learned how to do remote sensing, though, and it's pretty awesome. Spectrographical analysis of starlight that has passed through an exoplanet's atmosphere can tell us a lot about the atmospheric chemistry going on there, even from thousands of lightyears away. While there is uncertainty involved because we can't always tell what is produced by an Earthlike biosphere vs. a previously unknown geological process, if we see something the size of Earth orbiting a star at a distance that allows liquid water on the surface, and detect certain compounds in its atmosphere... damn right we're going to know we've found life.

    Not only are we starting to look for these kinds of things, we're rapidly getting better at it in terms of precision, accuracy, understanding, and rate. There are around 30 billion stars in the Milky Way that could potential have a truly Earthlike planet orbiting them (not Earthlike as astronomers use the term, but as in theoretically the same in all the characteristics that caused us to be here talking about it).

    If you start with the assumption that we're not special, and the understanding that we're just the outcome of chemistry based on the available type and quantity of material that collapsed and formed the Solar system, then it's just a matter of how good or bad the odds of an Earth forming are... and there literally 10s of billions of chances floating around our galaxy. We don't have to go to them, their light comes to us, we just have to look.

    So yes, unless the odds of life evolving around a star in a galaxy are in the trillions-to-one-against range, we're going to find it. And given how quickly the technology is advancing, most of us will live long enough to see the announcement of it.

    • Maybe we will. Finding life does not require finding other civilizations, which is the assumption that people jump to. There has been life on earth for nearly a billion years and detectable civilization for less than 200. Based on current trends, it does not seem likely that advanced civilizations are likely to last very long either. If there is another civilization out there that contact us, they are probably so advanced that they would want nothing to do with us.

      • The brevity of a technologically advanced civilization I can buy. If it takes 4.5 billion years (approximately) for one to emerge, on an Earth-like planet around a Sun-like star that life probably has a half-million year window even if it doesn't go extinct for any of a billion different reasons.

        The rarity of such civilizations is an unknown. Maybe we're the fluke of all flukes. Intelligence appears very much to be an inevitable outcome of complex life given enough time, but our degree of it may just be

    • Not only are we starting to look for these kinds of things, we're rapidly getting better at it in terms of precision, accuracy, understanding, and rate. There are around 30 billion stars in the Milky Way that could potential have a truly Earthlike planet orbiting them (not Earthlike as astronomers use the term, but as in theoretically the same in all the characteristics that caused us to be here talking about it).

      Would like to see some references, and your qualification of "Earthlike" There are 100 billion

  • Is a large hint that this is BS, With such far off time scales they are hoping in less than 25 yeas no one will recall this.
  • there may be plenty of life in the universe trouble is we have to be in the same space \ time as it to find it.
  • They already exist and they are here on Earth. UAPs been tracking our carrier fleets.

  • Its likely that before the end of 2049 there will be life on another planet, but it won't be alien.
    (Humans going to Mars).

  • Please give us money for this project which will produce tangible results within a human lifetime

  • we could find intelligent life somewhere...

  • https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5... [imdb.com]

    what ever is found, please just leave it there

  • well we don't really need to fly off out to eleven times the radius of the solar system or whatever, we just need to redirect the light back here where we can see it. Redirecting the rays from the cardinal points of the sun to a single point could be done with a handful of telescopes...

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