As science and technology become more advanced astronomers are discovering many planets orbiting stars outside our solar system. Now, a team of astronomers, including a professor from MIT, have come up with an idea of what our planet might look like to any advanced alien life looking back.
"Maybe somebody's looking at us right now, finding out what our rotation rate is -- that is, the length of our day," says Sara Seager, associate professor of physics and the Ellen Swallow Richards Associate Professor of Planetary Sciences at MIT. They would also be able to tell that our planet is divided by two oceans and continents and might be able to make some assumptions about our weather systems.
Seager and her colleagues at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, in Spain, have analyzed what astronomers on other worlds might learn about planets from great distances, using telescopes more advanced that what is currently available on Earth. Their study was published online in the Astrophysical Journal, will be printed in the journals April edition.
Most of the planets discovered outside of our solar system have not been seen but they have been observed indirectly by seeing the influence they have on the stars that they orbit. Even with the advanced telescopes planned by astronomers for use over the next few years, the planets would only appear as a single pixel or a single point of light. "The goal of [our] project was to see how much information you can extract" from very limited data, Seager says. A large amount of information can be gathered by viewing the changes of the one pixel image of a planet over time. The way Seager and her team analyze their data would work on any world are made up of solids, liquids and clouds in its atmosphere, even if those worlds were made up of unknown alien materials.
This method depends on clouds partially covering the alien planet's surface. Titan, covered by constant global smog and Venus, completely covered by steam clouds, would not be able to be analyzed.
Information from this post was derived from http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/earth-et-1220.html
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