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Alan Boss, astrophysicist at Carnegie Institution for Science:
The images from those new planets, he added, should identify "light from their atmosphere and tell us if they have perhaps methane and oxygen. That will be pretty strong proof they are not only habitable but actually are inhabited."
"I am not talking about a planet with intelligence on it. I simply say if you have a habitable world ... sitting there, with the right temperature with water for a billion years, something is going to come out of it.
"At least we will have microbes," said Boss.
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What would interest me most is the reaction of creationist to life on other planets:
ReplyDelete"Nobody told us!"
"The Bible is wrong afterall?"
"That can impossibly be life! I am not going to spent eternity in Heaven next to this amorphous sulfur breathing slime!"
... I guess most of the reaction will simply be as stupid as always...
Arend
Admittedly, for me one of the intriguing possibilities is that finding such life will upset a bunch of creationists.
ReplyDeletePerhaps more interesting (and disheartening) and entertaining (like a trainwreck) things will be seeing the sorts of lies they make up to deny the evidence as it mounts of life elsewhere in the universe.
ReplyDelete