2024-03-18 22:12:51
The idea of the existence of another form of life in the Cosmos has always caused curiosity among scientists and researchers. Several different missions are currently underway in search of extraterrestrial life beyond the borders of our planet.
On Mars, for example, a rover is collecting samples to help scientists determine whether life once existed on the Red Planet. NASA is sending probes to the solar system’s icy moons in search of pockets of liquid water and alien life, bTV reported.
Astrobiologists study the atmospheres of planets outside our solar system and also look for clues that could lead them to a non-human life form.
All these studies have been going on for several years now.
“I believe that within 10 years we will have evidence of whether life exists on planets close to ours. I think we’re really on the verge of finding out,” British Astronomer Royal Lord Martin Rees told the BBC.
Mars before and now
The first attempts to discover new living beings in space were made by the SETI Institute for the Search for Extraterrestrial Life and began in the middle of the 20th century. The astronauts then search for radio signals on other planets, a futile effort.
At the end of the 19th century, the idea of Mars was completely different. It was believed that rivers abounded on the planet, favorable for the existence of life. However, it turns out to be mostly dry, barren wasteland.
Meanwhile, planets around other stars are so small that they are difficult to detect, let alone learn more about.
In our solar system, Mars is still the best known place to look for life. We know that the planet was probably habitable billions of years ago, and that there were seas and lakes on its surface. Recently, scientists have even found clues that Mars may still have water in liquid form hidden beneath the planet’s southern ice cap.
Now the Mars rover “Perseverance” is walking on the planet, collecting samples from the dry bottom of a lake for the third year in a row.
The goal is to return these samples to Earth in the early 2030s, a mission known as Mars Sample Return. It also faces many challenges, including funding, for the rover to successfully return to Earth.
The world
In Search of Aliens: Are We Closer to Discovering Life on Mars?
Several different missions are currently underway in search of extraterrestrial life beyond the borders of our planet.
The idea of the existence of another form of life in the Cosmos has always caused curiosity among scientists and researchers. Several different missions are currently underway in search of extraterrestrial life beyond the borders of our planet.
On Mars, for example, a rover is collecting samples to help scientists determine whether life once existed on the Red Planet. NASA is sending probes to the icy moons of the Solar System in search of pockets of liquid water and alien life.
Astrobiologists study the atmospheres of planets outside our solar system and also look for clues that could lead them to a non-human life form.
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This is the first such discovery in more than 20 years
All these studies have been going on for several years now.
“I believe that within 10 years we will have evidence of whether life exists on planets close to ours. I think we’re really on the verge of finding out,” British Astronomer Royal Lord Martin Rees told the BBC.
Mars before and now
The first attempts to discover new living beings in space were made by the SETI Institute for the Search for Extraterrestrial Life and began in the middle of the 20th century. The astronauts then search for radio signals on other planets, a futile effort.
SETI begins a new large-scale search for extraterrestrial life
The institute will look for a “techno-signature” on distant planets
At the end of the 19th century, the idea of Mars was completely different. It was believed that rivers abounded on the planet, favorable for the existence of life. However, it turns out to be mostly dry, barren wasteland.
Meanwhile, planets around other stars are so small that they are difficult to detect, let alone learn more about.
In our solar system, Mars is still the best known place to look for life. We know that the planet was probably habitable billions of years ago, and that there were seas and lakes on its surface. Recently, scientists have even found clues that Mars may still have water in liquid form hidden beneath the planet’s southern ice cap.
Photo: en.wikipedia.org
Now the Mars rover “Perseverance” is walking on the planet, collecting samples from the dry bottom of a lake for the third year in a row.
The goal is to return these samples to Earth in the early 2030s, a mission known as Mars Sample Return. It also faces many challenges, including funding, for the rover to successfully return to Earth.
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“If we find life, things will look very different. “If we have the samples from Mars, we can go into very specific detail to study these rock-water interaction processes,” says Suzanne Schwentzer, planetary scientist and member of the Mars Sample Return project science team for Bi BBC.
It is possible that in some of the samples, scientists will find fossilized microbes in the rocks – organisms invisible to the naked eye, but still forms of life.
“As a scientist, I wouldn’t have devoted my life to this if I didn’t hope we had a good chance of finding something.” I hope we will find something, but I can’t predict it,” says Suzanne.
We now know of more than 5,500 planets around other stars, known as exoplanets, and new ones appear every day. Thanks to the enormous power of new telescopes, most notably the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers are beginning to study some of these planets in detail.
What are the ways of conducting research
Researchers use a variety of technologies to investigate suspected extraterrestrial life. They are using the JWST space telescope to see if they can figure out what gases are on some rocky Earth-like exoplanets. It wasn’t originally designed to study these planets when it was created at the turn of the century. It was subsequently commissioned to study these worlds because the largest space telescope in history and therefore the best machine to do so.
Astronomers’ first step is to confirm whether these planets have atmospheres. To that end, research is currently underway with JWST, with results expected later this year or in 2025.
“The next 20 years of searching for exoplanets will depend on this result.” If the red dwarf planets have atmospheres, we’re going to point all the telescopes on Earth at them to try to see something,” says Jesse Christiansen, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Exoplanet Science Institute.
If they can detect atmospheres there, the telescope will be used to search for signs of life. Most notably, the new Huge Radio Telescope, which will be launched in 2028.
The device is called the Square Kilometer Array and is located on two continents – Australia and South Africa.
Work on it has been going on for 30 years and it is supposed to contribute to solving fundamental questions of astrophysics about the origin and evolution of the universe.
For example, the telescope’s high sensitivity will make it possible to detect very weak radio signals from cosmic sources billions of light-years from Earth, including signals emitted in the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang.