2007-05-24 | SCIENCE
Forecasting Earth-Like Worlds
More than 200 extrasolar planets have been found so far, but none is like the Earth. Our past detection methods favoured gas giants like Jupiter. Such massive worlds exert a much greater and therefore more detectable effect on a star than a tiny planet like Earth does. Yet the dream of astrobiologists is to find many rocky Earth-like planets orbiting distant stars.
COROT, the first space telescope capable of detecting rocky planets around other stars, is already in orbit. The KEPLER and DARWIN missions are set to follow in the next two decades. In this interview with Astrobiology Magazine, Franck Selsis - planetary atmoshphere specialist - discusses the characteristics of atmospheres that can reveal the presence of life and what data from these missions is likely to reveal about the abundance of Earth-like planets.
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from Astrobiology Magazine, May 24, 2007
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