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The search for a second Earth

Researchers are developing new technologies that will be used in space telescopes that will be able not only to photograph those Earth twins but also to identify the exact chemistry according to their spectrum - the separation of the light into its component colors to identify planets with habitable atmospheres and climates.

WFIRST space telescope. Image: NASA
WFIRST space telescope. Illustration: NASA

We humans may not be the only ones pondering our place in the universe. If intelligent aliens roam the universe, they may also ask a question that has troubled humans for centuries: Are we alone? These aliens could have, like us, huge space telescopes dedicated to the study of distant planets and the search for life. For studying distant planets and searching for life. Did one of those telescopes take a picture of our blue marble, and did they pick up the evidence for the existence of forests and abundant creatures whose evidence will come in the form of simple chemicals: oxygen, ozone, water and methane?

NASA hopes to capture hints of chemistry similar to our own in Earth-like planets outside our solar system. referred to as EXO EARTH. Researchers are developing new technologies that will be used in space telescopes that will be able not only to photograph those Earth twins but also to identify the exact chemistry according to their spectrum - the separation of the light into its component colors to identify planets with habitable atmospheres and climates.
"Evidence of extraterrestrial life is not going to look like little green people. These may reveal themselves in the frequency domain," said Nick Sigler, chief technologist of the Extraterrestrial Planet Exploration Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which is developing, among other things, plans for future exoplanet imaging missions.

make the stars disappear

To achieve this goal, NASA is developing active coronagraphy technology in various laboratories, including JPL. Coronagraphs are instruments used in the 20th century to study our Sun. They use special filters to block the light from the sun's disk, so the scientists can study its outer atmosphere or corona (corona).

Now NASA is developing a more sophisticated coronagraph to block out the blinding light of other stars and reveal faint planets that may orbit them. Stars eclipse their planets. For example, our Sun is 10 billion times brighter than Earth. Like the difference between the spotlights of a large stadium versus a tiny candle.

"The search for Earth-like planets begins with starlight suppression," said Rhonda Morgan, coronagraph technologist in the Exoplanet Research Program at JPL. "It's like blocking the sunlight with a sun visor while driving in order to see the road."

Ground-based telescopes already used coronagraphs to image planets outside the solar system, but these planets were easy to image because they were large, bright, and orbited far from their host star. To take an image of Earth-sized planets that are in the habitable zone of stars similar to our Sun – the region where temperatures are suitable for life and oceans and lakes contain water – would require a space telescope. In this way it will be possible to avoid the blurring effect of our stormy atmosphere.

Several types of coronagraphs are under development for proposed space missions. One mission, led by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, called WFIRST will scan the sky in the infrared.
The WFIRST mission will be able to detect chemicals in the atmospheres of small planets such as super-Earths, sort of Earth's larger cousins, such as Kepler-452b, recently discovered by NASA's Kepler spacecraft. This could pave the way for future studies of outer Earths. The WFIRST mission will also investigate other cosmic mysteries such as dark matter and dark energy.
The main challenge for coronagraphers is to overcome the tendency of starlight to deviate, so placing a circular mask in front of the star does not block the light completely. Starlight curves like ocean waves curve around islands in a process called refraction.
Each type of coronagraph tries to solve this challenge in a different way, either by using a large number of filters as well as by using mirrors to re-distort the stars to make their light continuous.

Another challenge in the design of the coronagraphs is to overcome the tiny vibrations of the space telescope. A team at JPL is investigating how their coronagraphs can handle these fluctuations through experiments in vacuum chambers. They built a space telescope simulator large enough for these tests. In space the oscillations of the telescopes must decrease to allow coronagraph photographs. The simulated telescope will make it possible to test the WFIRST coronagraph under realistic conditions like in space.
As WFIRST development moves forward, mission planners are already thinking about the next step: a space telescope designed to image Earth-like stars. Developing such a mission would require more than a decade, but the development of the nuts and bolts of the technology is proceeding at a feverish pace.

"This is an exciting time for the study of exoplanets," said Gary Blackwood, director of the Exoplanet Exploration Program at NASA. "This is history in the making."

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6 תגובות

  1. So what is your solution?
    Leave this planet to destroy another? Maybe it's simpler to invest the resources in healing him and not destroying him?
    And you forgot a more important point - what if he is already settled? We don't have enough wars here that we need some more in space?
    The whole idea here is to know if there is life elsewhere, and not to destroy it, and not to find alternatives to the Earth, even though I agree that we need contingency plans for every case where one day for some reason our planet is in danger of being destroyed. But if this danger comes because of us, I'm not sure it's worth saving this culture.

  2. Joseph

    Enough with panic prophecies. Global warming has not been proven, seems more like a political or economic exercise or both.

    Cold fusion is currently in a pre-marketing stage (first products on the market will appear in about 10 years).

    There is currently a struggle going on in the world to take over cold fusion technology. There is a demand from the Armed Forces Committee for the US Department of Defense to prepare a review of the development of cold fusion in the world, the review must be submitted by September 22, 2016. Look for an article from the last few days in POPULAR MECHANICS magazine regarding the request of Congress to the US Department of Defense.

    If cold fusion technology continues to advance at the rate it has in the last 5 years, it is expected that within 50 years most fossil energy will be replaced by cold fusion technology. In that case, the excess carbon emission will disappear (although it is highly doubtful if it has an effect on global warming, global warming can arise from various reasons that have nothing to do with humans, there have been global warmings and coolings in the past "+- two degrees" without any disaster happening.

    There is no big melting of glaciers, just scare stories. The small melting of glaciers in the Arctic margin is a natural phenomenon like the flow of rivers into the sea (the flow of glaciers is slower than the flow of water because they are quite solid), the phenomenon of the flow of glaciers into the sea has been documented and there is no doubt about it, what scaremongers do is give a frightening interpretation to the flow of glaciers into the sea .

    The weather in Israel has not changed for the worse in the last 50 years, today there is a somewhat different distribution of precipitation than in the past because of the urban dust that accelerates precipitation near the urban coast of Israel (this is a well-known effect of "sediment nuclei" and in the past they tried to take advantage of it by blooming "iodide" sediment nuclei The money is as I imagine." If there is a change for the worse in the precipitation, it will be in Jordan because the increase in precipitation in Israel dilutes the precipitation in Jordan.

    Most of Israel has always been habitable and will be habitable in the future as well. Israel will lack drinking water from natural sources and this will be solved through desalination. Water for domestic consumption by all of Israel can be desalinated 100 percent. The only question is the price, probably in the end the price will be reasonable.

    Israel was not a truly agricultural country in the past, because it is partially dry in terms of precipitation. Israel will also not be an agricultural country beyond the basic needs of its population, for that there will be enough water in Israel. There is no need to invest money in desalination for agricultural purposes because we will not be able to compete in agricultural products with countries that are prone to water, such an investment would be a waste of money.

    It will take hundreds of years before we reach colonies on Mars. It is not clear if we will ever be able to move to another sun, it is a shame to spend money on delusions about traveling to other suns, it is only good in movies.

  3. Yossi, already today food is produced for 12 billion people. Probably at the peak we will reach 9 billion people, and then the population will decrease naturally (the standard of living increases, the number of children decreases). The cases of population contraction in Japan, Europe, Russia as an example. Even today, despite economic growth Carbon emissions have not increased (due to the increasing use of renewable energies - wind, solar energy and more). You don't need a twin for the Earth, you can inhabit the Moon and Mars - what's more, it's easier to reach other and distant planets from there, if only because of their lower gravity.

  4. Combined with propulsion at a speed of 0.125 the speed of light based on a laser that was probably demonstrated a few months ago in laboratory conditions, and with the fact that the population of the earth has doubled in 50 years and that the greenhouse effect makes entire areas of the earth unfit for habitation including Israel, and that the melting of all the glaciers will raise the water level approx. 13 meters, which will flood the coastal cities, in my private opinion, our culture is in crisis, and an extraterrestrial settlement is important for maintaining civilization.

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