Space & Astronomy

Is planet hunting crucial to our survival ?

By T.K. Randall
May 7, 2012 ·  48 comments

Image Credit: NASA In the future the world's population is likely to increase to such an extent that one planet just isn't going to be enough, at some point the human race is going to need to colonize other planets and when that happens we're going to need to know where to go. Great strides have been made in recent years in the field of planet hunting and while we now know that extrasolar planets can be found in many different solar systems it isn't clear whether any of these would be suitable places to live.

"Determining whether these planets are habitable has become the new holy grail of astronomy," said Dr Charley Lineweaver. "It's probably one of the biggest, most confusing, and important issues that planetary scientists are going to have to deal with in the next 10 to 20 years."[!gad]In the future the world's population is likely to increase to such an extent that one planet just isn't going to be enough, at some point the human race is going to need to colonize other planets and when that happens we're going to need to know where to go. Great strides have been made in recent years in the field of planet hunting and while we now know that extrasolar planets can be found in many different solar systems it isn't clear whether any of these would be suitable places to live.

"Determining whether these planets are habitable has become the new holy grail of astronomy," said Dr Charley Lineweaver. "It's probably one of the biggest, most confusing, and important issues that planetary scientists are going to have to deal with in the next 10 to 20 years."

Source: abc.net.au | Comments (48)

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