A NASA scientist has revealed her hopes for the next James Webb Space Telescope discovery and it involves a new Earth.
Dr. Michelle Thaller exclusively spoke to The U.S. Sun about the possibility of Nasa finding an Earth-like planet this year.
Thaller works as a scientist at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center and has decades of experience.
She said: “Right now there are images coming down every day from this new telescope and each one is something we haven’t seen yet.
“Not only that, the James Webb Space Telescope sees in a type of light that is invisible to our eyes.
She continued: “The Webb Telescope has the ability to actually detect chemicals, gases that are in planets around other stars.
“We’ve done this already with Webb but all the planets have been very different from Earth.
“I’m hoping this year maybe that we find one that’s very similar to Earth.”
Nasa has not yet pinpointed a planet that is similar enough to Earth that it could harbor life.
A discovery like this would be extraordinary.
An Earth-like planet doesn’t necessarily mean alien life will exist on it, but it does mean the chances of finding it are higher based on our understanding of the universe.
“At least we would know that there’s another place in the universe with very friendly to life conditions.
“I mean certainly, we could find a planet and we could say OK from the gases we see, there’s oxygen, there’s water vapor, there’s carbon dioxide, there’s methane.
“Interestingly enough, if you have all of those, that’s kind of difficult to get without life as far as we know,” explained Dr. Thaller.
The expert also told The U.S. Sun that she’s certain we’ll find life in our Solar System.
She said: “I definitely think we’ll find life on another planet.
“I think that in our own Solar System, we’re quite close to it but once again we don’t have that 100 percent thing.
Dr. Thaller spoke to The U.S. Sun at Beyond the Light, an exhibition at Artechouse in New York that aims to immerse the public in a deep space exploration experience.
The exhibit was created in collaboration with Nasa, and features newly analyzed galactical data from the JWST.
