ES VR It took humans thousands of years to explore our own planet, and centuries to comprehend our neighboring planets. Nowadays, new worlds are being discovered every week. , astronomers have identified more than 1,500 “exoplanets—worlds orbiting stars other than the sun. There's a “hot Saturn” 260 light-years from Earth that arbits its parent star so rapidly that a year there lasts less than three days. Circling another star 150 fight- years out isa scorched “hot Jupiter,” whose upper atmosphere is being blasted off to form a gigantic comettike tail. Astronomers have found three planets orbiting a pulsar—the remains of a ‘once mighty star shrunk into a spinning atomic a % nucleus the size of a city. Some worlds have evidently fallen into their suns. Others have been thrown out of their systems to become “floaters” that wander in eternal darkness, ‘Among all these, scientists are eager to find a hint of the familiar: planets resembling Earth That i, planets orbiting their stars at just the right distance—neither too hot nor too cold— to support life as we know it. We have not yet found planets that are quite i our ov, presumably because they’ e i To see a planet as small and dim as ours amid the glare of its star is like trying to sce a firefly in a fireworks display. Yet by pushing technology to the limits, astronomers are rapidly approaching the day when they cant find another Earth. And when they do, they can investigate it for signs of life. nite 4)| In Search of Other Earths 1 Ton: effective way to detect an exoplanel though, is to us a o 2 Doppler technique. This involves analyzin starlight for evidence that the stars bein pulled by the gravitational pull of i to them are big and bright and conveniently far Meee) Cee ag Bec 7 CE eR) e with the current lineup of exoplanets. Se eet eee aes eed ‘measured is CT Cha b (artist's conception below). More than twice Jupiter's diameter and et ee ras Cha, in the constellation Chamaelon, Parrmeter a second—about human vw ed. That's sufficient to detect a giant Janet in a big orbit, or a small one if it ¢ to its star. But the Earth tugs the sun d at only 0 th walking speed, about the rate that an infant c So far, astronomers are not able to dete tiny Ur psc Rt DU st hs eer oT very subtle changes they cause in their star. Prem Sed ee a ies ted of gravitational pull. As-the star moves slightly eee eo ee in the spectrum to shorter or longer wavelengths. Measuring the degree of spectral shift reveals the Peete om 4 remarkable amount of information by interpreting aS) A planet passing in front of a star minutely dims its light, revealing the planet's diameter, orbital Cer ee eet iets PCr enro ig ce eet et te from side to side, far enough to be measured against background stars. Desc Ce ore Pe ae eee een mesons Ifa star and planet pass in front of another star, their gravitational fields act as a fens, bending Tea eee ee Toros)Another approach is to watch a star for 60 alight periodic dip in its brightness. This occurs when an orbiting planet passes in front of it and blocks a fraction of its light. ‘At most, a tenth of all planetary systems are oriented so that these mini-eclipses, 65. called transits, are visible from Earth. So astronomers have to monitor a lot of stars to capture just a few transits. ‘The dream of astronomers is to discover a rocky planet roughly the size of Earth orbiting 10. in a habitable zone. Thatis, not so close to a star that the planet's veater has been baked away, nor so far out that ithas frozen into ice. If they succeed, they will have found what biologists believe could be a promising 18 abode! for life The best hunting grounds may be dwart stars, smalier than the sun. Firstly, dwarf stars are plentiful (seven of the ten stars nearest to Earth are dwarf stars). They also provide a steady supply of sunlight to any life-bearing planets within their habitable zone. ‘Additionally, dwarf stars are dim, and so the habitable zone lies closer in. (Imagine dwarf stars as small campfires, where campers must 85 sit close to be comfortable.) If the planet is closer to the star, it’s easier for astronomers to detect a transit observation, A close-in planet also exerts a stronger pull on its ‘star. That makes it easier to detect with the % Doppler method. Indeed, the most promising planet yet found—the “super Earth” Gliese 581 d—oibits in the habitable zone of a red dwarf star only a third the mass of the sun. 4b bnin2e Oss no ne 1 130 ‘e—But Not as We Know It? If an Earthlike planet is found within a star's habitable zone, a dedicated space telescope auld be used to look for signs of life. Most likely, scientists will examine the light coming from the planet for possible biosignatures such ‘as atmospheric methane and oxygen. They might also look for the "red edge” produced when chlorophyll?-containing piants reflect red light. Directly detecting and analyzing the planet's ‘own light will not be easy. Its light might be just one ten-billionth the light of the star's. But when a planet transits, starlight shining through the atmosphere could reveal clues to its composition that a space telescope might be able to detect. ‘The challenge facing scientists is not just having to-pertorm a chemical analysis of planets they cannot see. Scientists must also keep in mind that extraterrestrial life may be very different from life here at home, The lack of the ved edge from an exoplanet, for instance, does not exclude the possibility of Ife. Life thrived on Earth for billions of years before land plants appeared and populated the continents, ‘The prablem for scientists is that biological evolution is inherently unpredictable. Itis possible that life originated on an Earthlike planet at the same time it did here. But life ‘on that planet today would almost certainly be very different from terrestrial? life. As the biologist Jacques Monod once commented, life evolves not only through necessity—the universal workings of natural law—but also through chance, the unpredictable intervention ‘of countless accidents. 1 Anabodels ahome. 2 Chlorophyll the green eolosing matter sn plants, which fables thee Lo eonvirt Sunlght ito cnérsy 1 Wnem ne Sy something s terrestrial, we mean Mt jrOWs ‘or ves on Earth,Chance has played a role many times in our planet’ history. The most dramatic are the mass extinctions that millions of species and creat life forms to evolve. Some of these acci appear to have been caused by comet: asteroids colliding with Earth. An impact million years ago, for instance, he d kill off the dinosaurs and opened up opportunities for the distant ancestors of uman b Hence, scientists look not just for ntical to the modern Earth, but for planets resembling the Earth as it used to be or might have been, it was not easy for earlier pioneers to undertake explorations of the ocean floors, 9 the far side of the moon, or discern vidence of oceans beneath the frozen surfaces of Jupiter's moons. Neither will it be easy to find life on the planets of other e that billions of such planets must exist. They hold the promise of expanding not only the seope ledge but also the richne eet ed Re ace Captured by the Hubble Telescope Ce eee ns Dee ey Cee Cy