Tyler Robinson - Astronomy
"The Search for Other Earths Begins at Home"
1) What is the "vegetation red edge" and how might it be useful in our search for life beyond Earth?
2)When the Galileo spacecraft observed Earth in the early 1990s, it detected pulses of radio signals from the planet. What were the sources of these signals? What important conclusion does this lead us to?
3) The methods which we primarily use to detect exoplanets, at best, provide us with a mass and size (radius) of the planet. Is this enough information to determine if the world is truly Earth-like (similar temperatures on the surface, oceans of liquid water, etc.)? Provide an example which strengthens your argument.
4) By observing changes in how blue the distant Earth appeared, NASA's EPOXI mission was able to produce a crude map of what?
5) Which world in the Solar System most closely resembles the majority of the more than 500 exoplanets that have been discovered to date (especially with regard to mass and size)?
6) Have we detected any worlds with the same mass and size as Earth?
Last modified: Wed May 25 13:22:02 PDT 2011