Search for Life in the Univese

nasa.gov/ames/kepler/nasas-kepler-discovers-first-earth-size-planet-in-the-habitable-zone-of-another-star.

The above is an interesting and brief discussion with some scientists about the search for life somewhere in the universe.

My fascination with the results of its explorations has remained with me. Yes, the first efforts of launching into space in the 1960s and 1970s had me glued to the television. Whether a space walk or a moon walk, such scientific accomplishments made my imagination soar.

Of course, along with that is science fiction. Traveling through the galaxy or even to different galaxies always gets my imagination going. Yes, I like Star Trek and Star Wars.

I imagine that as long as humans have been looking at the stars, they have wondered if there is life on distant planets. In our imagination, we picture distant worlds where aliens exist -- aliens either who look very much like us, or who look very much unlike us. We might one day get to know such creatures, or, if a lot of science fiction is correct, we may run screaming away from them.

NASA, of course, is always on the case. With new technology like the Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers have been looking deeper into space for more signs of potentially habitable, perhaps life-sustaining, planets that look more like our own. Among the disappointing results is that life is scarce in this universe. Yes, we can detect beautiful patterns and huge distances. We discover amazing things. Yet, most of the universe is either nuclear type objects like the sun or cold, hard rock.

Thus, imagine my fascination when NASA recently, they found one such cousin to Earth approximately 500 light years away. Given that light travels 5.88 trillion miles in one year, well, you do the math. It is a long way!

NASA has named the planet Kepler-186f, and its discovery "is a significant step toward finding worlds like our planet Earth," says Paul Hertz, director of the space agency's Astrophysics Division. Kepler 186-f is in what scientists call the "habitable zone" in relation to its closest star, or about the right distance to sustain life as we know it without frying or freezing it. Kepler 186-f orbits its star every 130 days and receives one-third the energy that we get from our sun, meaning that the sun at high noon there is only about as bright as it is here about an hour before sunset.

In other words, you could probably leave the sunscreen behind.

Like with most of these discoveries, however, the scientists do not yet know if Kepler 186-f harbors any life, or if it could sustain life as we know it, since they have not learned much about its atmosphere. Although the planet is about the size of Earth, we do not know much about its mass and composition either. Previous research leads experts to believe that the surface is rocky, just like every other planetary body we know about except Earth, whose surface area is 71 percent water -- the basic building block of life. The chances for life to grow on places like Kepler 186-f are very slim, but we keep looking for life among the dead stones and craters of those distant worlds.

Our fascination with finding life elsewhere in the universe could lead to some interesting reflections on an Easter Sunday somewhere.