New Technique Could Find Another “Pale Blue Dot”

By looking back at Earth from alien’s point of view, scientists have developed a new technique to look for other worlds that might harbor oceans, and therefore life. Using the old Deep Impact spacecraft, which is now being used for the EPOXI mission, scientists are able to look at the spectrum of an extrasolar planet’s light which would reveal the presence of water. “We used the High Resolution Imager telescope on Deep Impact to look at Earth from tens of millions of miles away,” said Nicolas B. Cowan, of the University of Washington, ” and developed a method to indicate the presence of oceans by analyzing how Earth’s light changes as the planet rotates. This method can be used to identify extrasolar ocean-bearing Earths.”

Full article by Nancy Atkinson on Universe Today