There isn’t a week that goes by where the news hasn’t announced another discovery of an Earth-sized planet revolving around another far-off star system. This is exciting stuff, and with the advances in astronomy, namely more powerful telescopes land-based as well as space-based, scientists are having a field day discovering these planets. What does this mean for the human race? Does it mean that life exists there?
Just because these discoveries of other Earth-sized planets are occurring with more and more frequency doesn’t necessarily mean that life exists there. At least life as we now know it. Some of these planets just might have the essential ingredients for life, according to NASA, but the problem is that the distance is so great and our telescopes just aren’t powerful enough yet to tell exactly what these planets are made of. However, scientists can deduce that they can be rocky planets, just as our Earth is, or they can have some other weird properties that are quite bizarre! Since astronomers don’t have the ability to view these planets directly, they have to ascertain what the nature of these planets are by figuring out their passage through their star system. In other words, astronomers can tell how large the planets are by their orbit around their star. Without getting too technical, when these planets pass in front of their home stars, the amount of wobble affecting these stars enables them (the astronomers) to tell how large they are. The more wobble, or pull on the star, the larger the planet is. There are other ways for them to tell the composition of their atmospheres, and this all has to be done by using some advanced mathematics.
Scientists have only been dealing with these exoplanets for less than twenty years, but more and more information is coming out because of the advancement of our telescopes. In the near future, astronomers might even be able to observe in more detail these planets, and might even find advanced life forms! That is the exciting part for the human race, the discovery of an intelligent society on one of these planets, perhaps by even discovering advanced structures.
What would this mean for us? It would be the discovery not only of the century, but the most important revelation of all time. To know that we are not alone in the universe would change the history books, and might even change how we behave on Earth. The fact is that just in our Milky Way Galaxy alone, there are at least one hundred billion stars, and our galaxy is only one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in our universe. This is mind-blowing stuff, and to finally have the knowledge that we are not alone might just give us the impetus to explore space at a faster pace. One day soon we will have the proper technological tools to explore beyond our neighboring solar system, and to know in-depth the marvelous revelations to come. That is what our scientists and astronomers are working towards, and the impact on our society will be profound
