Posted on 03/20/2006 5:36:27 PM PST by KevinDavis
Marc Kuchner at Goddard Space Flight Center is aiming to attack a question that has puzzled us since we first peered into the heavens: Are we alone in the universe?
Kuchner came to the Greenbelt research center six months ago from Princeton to step up a search for habitable Earth-like planets outside our solar system.
He is writing a proposal for NASA funding for a new space hunting probe and, over the next few years, plans to hire a staff of five or six researchers for the fledgling ExoPlanets and Stellar Astrophysics Laboratory. The size of the staff will depend on future NASA funding, he said.
The research is aimed at determining not only whether Earth-like planets exist elsewhere, but how they formed and whether any of them could make a future home.
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
That's great. Maybe he can replace the NASA program to find earthlike planets that was just cancelled.
Personally, I think that a private research group should be doing this..
It's mostly universities using grant funds from gov'ts.
We can never travel to this earth-like planet anyway. We can't communicate with it unless there is civilization there of comparable technological development.
Finding earth-like planets will be too much of a unverifiable tease to those of us who want to know what's there. It is almost better if we don't find any candidates.
Why the hell not? We can do slow interstellar travel NOW. We know how to do it.
2 words.....Warp Bubble.
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/A/Alcubdrive.html
Thanks once again for another fascinating post, Kevin :)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.