Distant Planet Imaging Project Gets More Funding

It doesn't come easy writes "NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts has chosen a proposal by the University of Colorado (UC) at Boulder to image distant planets around other stars for a second round of funding. Known as the New Worlds Observer, the UC project is for an orbiting, soccer-field sized "starshade" shaped like a daisy that would funnel light from distant planets between its petals to a second spacecraft trailing 50,000 miles behind. If the concept proves feasible, it could 'identify planetary features like oceans, continents, polar caps and cloud banks, and even detect biomarkers like methane, water, oxygen and ozone [...]'"

Comments

Re:How will the religious establishment react?

[Rei]

Ed Babinski wrote a good article on some of the problems presented with life on other worlds (start at "All kidding aside").

The presence of even lifeless planets beyond earth was deeply troubling for early theologans, and the concept was widely denied for theological reasons. "Great lights" that light noone's sky. Tracts of land far greater than those on Earth, doing nothing, for noone - I.e., God creating in vain. If they did have life, they couldn't trace it back to adam, et al. Such a huge act of creation, and God didn't see if fit to put a word of it in the bible? There were all sorts of major problems, and it took a long time to get it accepted.