Posted on 07/15/2014 9:28:58 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
Cambridge, Mass. (CBS CONNECTICUT) – NASA predicts that 100 million worlds in our own Milky Way galaxy may host alien life, and space program scientists estimate that humans will be able to find life within two decades.
Speaking at NASA’s Washington headquarters on Monday, the space agency outlined a plan to search for alien life using current telescope technology, and announced the launch of the Transiting Exoplanet Surveying Satellite in 2017. The NASA administrators and scientists estimate that humans will be able to locate alien life within the next 20 years.
“Just imagine the moment, when we find potential signatures of life. Imagine the moment when the world wakes up and the human race realizes that its long loneliness in time and space may be over — the possibility we’re no longer alone in the universe,” said Matt Mountain, director and Webb telescope scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which plans to launch the James Webb Space Telescope in 2018.
“What we didn’t know five years ago is that perhaps 10 to 20 per cent of stars around us have Earth-size planets in the habitable zone,” added Mountain. “It’s within our grasp to pull off a discovery that will change the world forever.”
(Excerpt) Read more at connecticut.cbslocal.com ...
Just because there may be ‘life’ on other worlds does not mean it’s friendly.........................
I predict we won’t find anything that is intelligent.
I hope the rise of the world’s oceans has been reversed by then.
And Climate change is man made....
We’re already not “alone” in the sense that we share the planet with close to 1.6 million other species of living things.
I doubt they will get ‘proof’ of any life forms outside of our planet. They are likely that even if their where, they are so far away as to be outside of ‘listening’ ability. The static noise of space would drown out any ‘proof’.
Even as a teenager I used to look up at the Milky Way at night and think to myself, “There ain’t no way that there isn’t life out there somewhere.” It’s a common sense thing. ;-)
You mean all the habitable worlds are populated with leftists?
Oh the horror!!
What evidence they'd need to conditionally declare life on any planet they find might not necessarily match our own.
Humans have been transmitting intelligent analog signals for over one hundred years and digitized signals for the past forty. If Mr. Einstein is correct, it is virtually impossible for alien biological or mechanical entities to visit earth or us them giver the enormous distances. However it is not beyond belief to assume that a distant advanced culture, itself linked to other distant advanced cultures, has received our signals and has sent a response. Perhaps in twenty or thirty years you will open your computer and it will display a truly wondrous message.
Isn’t NASA actually supposed to do stuff & not just speculate and predict.
Not gonna happen. Talk about over-promise, under-deliver. The most they will come up is some theory about how some planet “must have life” based on gases, climate, etc.
With billions of galaxies, Earth will ultimately prove to be not so special.
This is a great message for getting funding. “200 years” would not be nearly as interesting.
Classic example of a "scientific wild ass guess" made without any supporting data at all. Which means, of course, that there's nothing scientific about it at all, making it only a "wild ass guess."
A scientists' "wild ass guess" has no greater validity at all than anybody else's.
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.