Monday, March 9, 2009

NASA Hunts for Earths

Did you know that NASA has a planet-hunting spacecraft named Kepler? It is named after the German 17th-century astrophysicist. It has been launched and is going to be on the lookout for possible Earths in one faraway corner of the galaxy.

The telescope will spend 3 1/2 years staring at roughly 100,000 stars, measuring their brightness and any winks in the light that might signify orbiting planets. They are not sure what they will find but Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for science thinks it will be sad if we are the only Earth in an empty universe and that we are the best there is. I disagree. We have enough Earth of our own and are basically happy in it, why should we want to find another one? What good would it do if you could never get there to see it? Who knows, though, they got to Mars, what could be next?

No comments: