"So from afar, we can see that there's water vapor, for example, which may be an indication of water on the planet's surface," Seager explained. "We can detect oceans, maybe weather." After water, oxygen would be the next key find. Earth's atmosphere is rich with oxygen due to plant life. Uninhabited sister planet Venus, in comparison, has just a trickle. "You can't generate that much oxygen by geologic processes," Seager said. "Life produces the same thing that can be produced naturally but, there's lots more of it." Earth From a Distance Among Seager's projects is a recycled asteroid probe now on an extended mission to hunt for extrasolar planets as it makes it way toward a comet. NASA on Thursday released one of the first offerings from Deep Impact's second life: a movie of Earth. "It helps the search for other life-bearing planets in the universe by giving insights into how a distant, Earth-like alien world would appear to us," said University of Maryland astronomer Michael A'Hearn, the lead scientist for the Deep Impact extended mission, called EPOXI. For example, in the video, sunlight can be seen bouncing off Earth's oceans. "Similar glints to be observed from extrasolar planets could indicate alien oceans," said Drake Deming, with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The team also found eye-popping reflections of the planet's plant-covered continents in near-infrared imagery taken by Deep Impact. "They're brighter in that wavelength," Seager observed. "I didn't really appreciate how that makes the continents stand out until I saw it." Related Links: |
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