K2-18b, which is eight times the mass of Earth, is now the only exoplanet known to have both water and temperatures that could support life. The discovery is the first successful atmospheric detection for an exoplanet orbiting in its star’s ‘habitable zone’, at a distance where water can exist in liquid form.
“A handful of researchers have tried to simulate Earth’s transit spectrum, but this is the first empirical infrared transit spectrum of Earth,” says McGill University astronomer Nicolas Cowan with the Institute for Research on Exoplanets. “This is what alien astronomers would see if they observed a transit of Earth.”
“Our supremacy as the prime understanders of the cosmos is rapidly coming to end,” says famed British environmentalist and futurist, James Lovelock describing cyborgs as self-sufficient, self-aware descendants of today’s robots and artificial intelligence systems in the emerging era of the Novacene. “I think of cyborgs as another kingdom of life,” he says. “They will stand to us in much the same way as we ourselves, as a kingdom of animals, stand to plants. ”
“NASA’s search for life in the Universe is focused on so-called Habitable Zone planets, which are worlds that have the potential for liquid water oceans,” says Stephanie Olson at the University of Chicago. “But not all oceans are equally hospitable–and some oceans will be better places to live than others due to their global circulation patterns”.
“It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God – but to create him, wrote Arthur C Clarke, author of 2001 A Space Odyssey. Clarke also famously warned against a mission to explore the most intriguing of Jupiter’s 79 moons, which has now been given the green light to proceed to the final stages of development of NASA’s Europa Clipper Mission.
