Should we be looking for life elsewhere in the universe? - Aomawa Shields
View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/should-we-be-looking-for-life-elsewhere-in-the-universe-aomawa-shields As the number of “potentially habitable” planets that astronomers find...
========== Astronomers have discovered thousands of
planets orbiting stars other than the Sun. They come in all sizes, at different orbital distances
from their stars. The closest of them are trillions
of miles away, and even the largest
are just fuzzy patches in the fields of high-powered telescopes. But if one of these planets is close
in size to the Earth and orbits not too close
and too far away from its parent star, it could be rocky and warm enough
to have oceans and perhaps life. Astronomers discover these potentially
habitable planets, and their eyes get big and wide. Could one of these distant worlds
carry the building blocks of life? Or even a living, breathing, civilization? Is the question, "Are we alone
in the universe?" about to be answer...