The task of finding a planet that is similar to Earth has seen increasing interest every passing year. Because of this, how close are we to locating this such a rare jewel? Not too far, according to scientists. Apparently, if everything goes according to plan, an alien planet similar to Earth could be found in the next 20 years.
At a panel at NASA that is all about the search for life in the universe initiative, the discussions surrounded the questions on whether or not Earth is alone in the Universe, along with the technological advances made in the last decade that could allow scientists to come up with an answer to those questions.
"Imagine the moment that the news breaks we've discovered Earth 2.0," says Matt Mountain, the director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, at a panel held by NASA on Monday.
"Imagine the moment the whole world wakes up to the news our long loneliness in time and space may have ended. We may no longer be alone in the universe."
NASA and its scientists are hell-bent on finding Earth 2.0, and with the new James Webb Space Telescope that is set to launch in the year 2018, this is very much possible. Within the next 20 years, we could very well come across Earth-like planets or even alien life somewhere out there in Universe.
At the moment, there's around 100 billion planets in the universe, and we believe quite a few of these planets can support life. The task right now is finding these planets, and then the next task would be creating the technology to get us there.
The search has come this far thanks to the Kepler space telescope. It has managed to locate several planets in its lifetime, though it wasn't good enough to locate Earth-like planets. The James Webb telescope was designed for this very purpose, since the telescope is expected to be stationed at 930,000 miles away from Earth. That's around 4 times the distance of the Earth from the Moon.
While James Webb will have the ability to locate Earth-like planets, it won't be able to tell if these planets are harboring life on the surface.
