Will we discover an Earth-like planet in 2013? Interview with planetary scientist Abel Mendez
IMG Via Flickr
By: ITHP Staff | January 15th 2013
If you enjoy this article please support us by "liking" our Facebook page. Thanks!
Humans could very well be within days of discovering the first Earth-like planet thanks in part to brilliant scientists including Abel Méndez. He is a planetary scientist and director of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory (PHL) at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo. The PHL is a research and educational virtual laboratory dedicated to studies of the habitability of Earth, the Solar System, and extrasolar planets. Source
ITHP had the once in a lifetime opportunity to interview Mr. Méndez about this potential discovery. What follows is educational, interesting, and sure to keep you entertained.
You have been quoted as saying we will find the first earth-like planet in the next year. Why 2013?
The NASA Kepler mission is getting closer to finding an Earth-like planet. In fact, they recently released a large dataset with some possible detections that need to be sorted out. It is expected that this will happen sometime in 2013. There are no guarantees, but things are moving really fast now in the "exoplanet hunting" field due to a load of data. Also, two additional important questions for 2013 are How frequent are 'Earth-like' planets? and How far are they from Earth?
What exactly makes a planet earth-like. What key characteristics are you looking for?
Astronomers are vey limited in the detection and characterization capabilities of planets in others stars. We are far from finding an Earth-like planet in its more colloquial sense (i.e. habitable to humans). We only know of some potentially habitable exoplanets that are quite larger than Earth (check HEC). What we mean by finding and Earth-like planet is just that it has a similar mass, size, and temperature as Earth. This is not a guarantee that it has water, a breathable atmosphere, or even life. These are the questions for the next years, probably decades. So lets say we find an earth twin.
Now what? When do we make contact with its inhabitants? (Only joking) But what is the process to determine if an earth-like planet has life on it? How do we study it?
Testing an exoplanet for life will be the 'grand finally' of exoplanet science. This is totally out of our capabilities now and it will probably take decades to do so. Theoretically this is possible with specialized space telescopes. We might even be able to detect the signatures of surface vegetation in those planets. There is no space telescope now or planned with this capability. The coming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) might be able to sample the atmosphere of large planets but not necessarily of those Earth-size.
What excites you most about this possibility? The chance of encountering extraterrestrial life or the opportunity of humans to actually colonize space?
I think that both the detection of extraterrestrial life and the colonization of space are exciting prospect for studying the planets in our Solar System and beyond. I expect that humanity will move forward to the universe someday, out of my lifetime, but I hope to live to the first detection of extraterrestrial life, if any.
How has the economic downturn affected the field of [exoplanet] research? What is its future?
Exoplanets science needs more telescopes, specially those in space undisturbed by the terrestrial atmosphere. There are no formal plans today for the construction of a dedicated telescope able to sample the atmosphere and surface of small Earth-size planets. The next best thing, the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF), was discarded by NASA a few years ago due to funding issues. The JWST is our only favorable option, after NASA Kepler, in the next years. However, it is a multipurpose astronomical space telescope and does not have all the desired sensitivity of TPF. Many ideas are moving forward but unfortunately none approved for construction yet.
If you enjoy this article please support us by "liking" our Facebook page. Thanks!
