Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Sunday September 09 2018, @09:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the search-for-alien-life-is...looking-up dept.

New Report Urges NASA to Intensify Search for Exoplanets and Aliens

A new Congressionally mandated report says NASA should refine its strategy and improve its tools to foster the study of exoplanetary systems and expedite the search for alien life.

The new consensus study report, authored by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, highlights several strategic priorities that, if implemented, will go a long way in ensuring that scientists have the resources they need to study exoplanets (planets in orbit around other stars). It's called the Exoplanet Science Strategy, and it identifies specific research priorities while making recommendations on how NASA should invest its efforts.

"Over the past decade, exoplanet science has yielded many remarkable discoveries, from the direct imaging of young gas-giant exoplanets to the detection of molecules and clouds within the atmospheres of more than a hundred worlds," write the authors in the new report. "However, our knowledge of the full range of exoplanet characteristics, and that of their local environments, remains substantially incomplete."

[...] Looking ahead to the next 10 years or more of astronomical discovery, the authors are asking NASA to develop an advanced space telescope to enable direct imaging of distant exoplanets, with a particular focus on detecting Earth-like planets in orbit around stars similar to our Sun. In addition, NASA should invest in ground-based astronomy, the report says. Two future observatories, the Giant Magellan telescope (GMT) and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), will offer advances in the imaging and spectroscopy (measuring the absorption and emission of light) of entire planetary systems. These observatories will also be able to detect molecules, such as oxygen, within the atmospheres of far away planets. The GMT is currently under construction, but the TMT has yet to be approved.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09 2018, @11:01PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09 2018, @11:01PM (#732609)

    This is perfect example of pork barrel politics. Congress wants to spend billions so universities in their districts can get some moolah and the end result will be nothing. Better to spend the money on something useful like anti-terrorism, where at leadt you get a few dead muslims for your money.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   0  
       Troll=1, Underrated=1, Total=2
    Extra 'Troll' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   0  
  • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09 2018, @11:17PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09 2018, @11:17PM (#732611)

    No let's continue attracting the attention of alien life. Hopefully some helpful aliens will visit Earth and destroy all humans. At least then we get billions of dead humans.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Unixnut on Monday September 10 2018, @07:08AM

      by Unixnut (5779) on Monday September 10 2018, @07:08AM (#732678)

      > No let's continue attracting the attention of alien life. Hopefully some helpful aliens will visit Earth and destroy all humans. At least then we get billions of dead humans.

      Don't worry, based on the current world situation, we don't need need helpful aliens to get billions of dead humans, we seem well on the way to doing it to ourselves.

      I for one, am happier that if the USA is going to waste money on "pork barrel" projects, it be for something other than bringing death and destruction to humanity for a change. Maybe after wasting it on science projects, it can waste it on roads and transport infrastructure as well.