NASA’s Discover supercomputer is made of thousands of computers that manage to make seven quadrillion calculations each second. Their primary objective is to predict the upcoming changes in Earth’s future climate. In addition to this, recently, they have been assigned an additional task: to discover whether any of the 4000 discovered exoplanets could host any forms of life.
Scientists state that the existence of other forms of life in the Universe is very likely. Surprisingly, the creatures are even exposed to the same climate conditions as the humans on Earth. Therefore, NASA’s team of researchers soon understood that the research needs to be conducted more in-depth to determine if the circumstances that the humanity is exposed to might be more limited than on other planets.
The scientists are waiting for the forthcoming next generation of powerful telescopes that will most likely provide them with infinite resources. The principal purpose is to observe other rocky planets in search of their atmospheric conditions, as well as signs of liquid water, the most crucial factor that sustains life.
Climate models can imagine life on exoplanets
For the time being, the most approachable situation would be to send a spacecraft to the closest planet outside our solar system. However, the journey towards the exoplanet would take about 75.000 years because the technology we have today is not nearly as advanced as we would need.
In addition to that, even when using powerful telescopes, they are still not powerful enough to study the details of exoplanets. Since they are too small, the glasses are drowned by the light, making it impossible for the scientists to determine the chemical composition of the surface of the planet.
Chief exoplanetary scientist, Karl Stapelfeldt, declared that climate models are still almost impossible to explore utilizing today’s technology. To make things more understandable, he stated that studying exoplanets is precisely like standing in Washington DC and trying to spot a firefly in Lost Angeles.
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