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Very good point. I'm in my 30s and it's even come a long way since I was a kid. We didn't know until recently that there were planets orbiting other stars. We
by benlumen 6y ago
Very good point. I'm in my 30s and it's even come a long way since I was a kid.
We didn't know until recently that there were planets orbiting other stars. We suspected that there might be, but we didn't know. The idea that there could be other "earth-like planets" was a hopeful guess.
When the headlines started coming in from Kepler, that was huge. Very exciting and huge.
- XorNot 6y agoThe big news we're looking for from James Webb is the possibility of grabbing evidence of chlorophyll fringes in the IR spectra of other planets. That is going to be huge news if we find it (I suspect we'll get a lot of other results first though and a ton of new interesting work looking for alternative photosynthetic chemistries).
- NortySpock 6y agoWow, chlorophyll-equivalent detection? I though JWST was just going to be able to prove diatomic oxygen or other gas chemistries in atmospheres. https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/forScientists/faqScientists.html#:~:text=Webb%20possesses%20a%20combination%20of,longer%20wavelengths%20in%20the%20infrared https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/forScientists/faqScientist...