Bright Exoplanet Lighting Could Indicate Intelligent Life

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 503.

Super-Earth Exoplanets Could Be Better for Life

Text 1

Fill in the blanks as you listen to the following texts about exoplanets.

Listening (1)

Dimitar Sasselov, director of Harvard's Origins of Life Initiative, explains how rocky exoplanets larger than Earth could have greater potential for life than Earth did.

Earth is the only planet we know of that harbors life. But ___________ some exoplanets ____ even better for life?

“It just happened that in our own solar system, the Earth is the largest ___________ planet.” Astronomer Dimitar Sasselov directs the Harvard Origins of Life ____________ and wrote the new book ‘The Life of Super-Earths'.

“Now we know that planets which are __________ but bigger than the Earth are ________________, they're around other stars in big numbers. And we certainly know that if you're smaller than the Earth a lot of things go wrong. Your climate is less stable, your atmosphere can go away, like Mars, plate tectonic activity and ___________ ___________ goes away as well.

“The Earth is great. But if you're a little bit bigger than the Earth, all those things are the same or even better—more active, more chemistry, more stability—and nothing is worse. That you have a little bit higher G? That's not a big deal, especially for the microbes.”

—Steve Mirsky

Text 2

New telescopes could spot aliens on planets around distant stars, if they like their cities really brightly lit.

There's probably no intelligent life in the outer solar system. But it couldn't hurt to check.

A new study suggests that astronomers ______ soon ________ _____ city lights on distant worlds. Astronomical campaigns already in the works, for instance, ________ _________ a large illuminated city as far away as the Kuiper Belt, where Pluto and many other icy worlds orbit. The research is on the site arxiv.org.

Artificial illumination on a Kuiper Belt Object would stand out because it ________ _______ less than reflected sunlight does when the world moved toward or away from the sun.

“Just by checking for how their brightness varies with distance, you ___________ ____ __________ to identify interesting candidates.”

Princeton's Edwin Turner, a co-author of the new study. Unfortunately, Turner says, no telescopes currently in the works __________ _____ ___________ enough to identify city lights in other planetary systems unless the aliens like things really bright.

“Forthcoming facilities __________ _____ __________ to see artificial lighting on another world if it's really much brighter than we use. It begins to become plausible that we ___________ _________ it. A million times would be for sure, and 10,000 times we ___________ __________ a chance.”

—John Matson

Explain the meaning of the following words and phrases from the texts above:

to harbor life

rocky planet

initiative

plate tectonic activity

plentiful

chemical enrichment

forthcoming facilities

to become plausible

to stand out

to spot aliens

be brightly lit

Grammar Practice (1)

Probability in the Present and Future