A group of experts from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has advised NASA to work on an extremely powerful telescope to find habitable planets like Earth. Every 10 years, the primary federal funding sources for astrophysics and astronomy, i.e., the National Aeronautical and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science, conduct a survey with the assistance of . of a group of experts under the auspices of national academics of science, engineering and medicine. The decadal survey sets out goals and priorities for organizations to gain a deeper understanding of the universe we are swimming in. This year, the survey is titled ‘Pathways of Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for 2020’. According to the report, the suggested priority programs include three scientific challenges.
One of the challenges is focused mainly on the ‘way to habitable world’. Within the broader science discipline, the survey has identified a priority science area of ’the path to habitable worlds’, which aims to discover worlds that may be similar to Earth and answer the fundamental question: ‘ are we alone?’ The report said such planets would be found in the “habitable zone – neither too far nor too cold, nor too near and hot” of their parent stars.
Only an ‘ultra-stable, space-based telescope equipped to block out starlight and directly image the planet’ could make the program’s goals a possible reality, the report said. According to experts, the research should be based on spotting biosignatures on exoplanets, which could be Earth-twins possible. The telescope needed to perform such a task must be equipped with infrared, ultraviolet and optical sensors that can produce high-contrast images of planets 10 billion times fainter than their star.
If upcoming experiments and suggested inventions provide evidence for other planets, humans’ view of the universe will change completely. On the other hand, if no trace of it is found, then the importance of our blue planet will suddenly increase, which will be very beneficial for the future as well.
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