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Earth As an Extrasolar Planet

Posted by timothy on Friday July 23, 2010 @07:00PM from the how-else-to-test dept.

sciencehabit writes "Astronomers have a theory that they can detect whether a planet light years away will be habitable by just looking at how its sun is reflected in its atmosphere. To test the idea, they pretended that they were observing Earth from a distant object — in this case, the moon. And sure enough, they picked up critical components for life in Earth's atmosphere: ozone, oxygen, sodium, and nitrogen."

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This just in by gmuslera · 2010-07-23 19:27 · Score: 5, Funny

NASA has finally proved that planet Earth is (still, at least) habitable! We knew that all that investment will bring us new knowledge some day.
1. Re:This just in by Arancaytar · 2010-07-23 21:57 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Well, they needed a control experiment to compare their findings to when they prove otherwise in 20 years.
Re:What a waste of money by Tablizer · 2010-07-23 20:14 · Score: 2, Funny

They could have just given me a few hundred thousand and I'd confirm for them that the Earth is hospitable for humans!
Until the point that American Idol and Fox News is detected ;-)

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Table-ized A.I.
sodium by Anonymous Coward · 2010-07-23 20:31 · Score: 2, Funny

It's natrium, you insensitive clod!
WTF? by mcneely.mike · 2010-07-24 00:00 · Score: 5, Funny

I for one welcome our new Earth overl-...... wait a second.....HEY, that's me!

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soylentnews.org Go there to enjoy the people!
Re:Narrow-minded folks by deusx · 2010-07-24 02:37 · Score: 2, Funny

And besides, finding life that uses oxygen means we're more likely to find life similar to ours, so we can have sex with it.