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James L. Green
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Science Channel
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James L. Green Director, Planetary Science Division, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
TRANSCRIPT:
Oh, I believe in the next several years, we'll be making some major breakthroughs in that area, to really be looking at how many stars are out there, in the Keplar field of view, that are Earth-sized. And then the follow-up measurements I'm sure will follow that in terms of, well, what are they like? Do they have atmospheres? And what's in the atmospheres? And does the atmosphere change?
So, in a recent experiment we did, we had a spacecraft look back at the Earth, and it looked back at the Earth in one pixel, and it took a spectrum, and it stared at that Earth, and that spectrum changed. And it changed because of the amount of clouds that it saw, the amount of land underneath that, the amount of water, and then the Moon went in front of it. So we now have a spectrum, a one-pixel spectrum of Earth. That will be our Rosetta Stone that we then can use to compare against other planets that are Earth-sized to determine if they are Earth-like, to determine if they have an ocean, land, an atmosphere with clouds, and perhaps even a moon. That's pretty spectacular.
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Scientists have thus far discovered some 250 "exoplanets," planets in orbit around stars that aren't our sun. For example, just 20.5 light years away from us, the planet Gilese 581c has some Earth-like characteristics, and its discoverers believe it has an atmosphere and maybe even oceans. Some scientists say that there may be Earth-like planets orbiting nearly every star [source: BBC]. We just have to go out and find them.
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