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Earth As an Extrasolar Planet

Posted by timothy on 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."

3 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. This just in by gmuslera · · 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 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Well, they needed a control experiment to compare their findings to when they prove otherwise in 20 years.

  2. WTF? by mcneely.mike · · Score: 5, Funny

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

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