"New Zealand and Japanese astronomers have discovered the most distant planet from Earth using a technique they believe could find other Earth-like planets capable of supporting life."
I have no doubt that space-based telescopes will be able to discern living, Earth-like worlds within the next thirty years. If we let them. As the following piece makes ominously clear, NASA's vision has been dealt such a confusing blow by W.'s half-cocked Moon-Mars "initiative" that we might be condemned to reinventing the wheel when we could be colonizing the Solar System and detecting biogenic gases in extrasolar atmospheres.
Commentary: Is Bush's Moon-to-Mars Vision Dimming?
"Like his father's proposal to go to Mars, President George W. Bush's grand space exploration vision appears to be on the verge of being scuttled well before launch. Despite its goal of refocusing NASA, the vision's potential to inspire dreams and garner new funds is largely evaporating."
I have to wonder if there's a hidden reason the future suddenly looks bleak for space telescopes. After all, Washington is controlled by theocrats for whom the notion of Earth-like planets elsewhere in the galaxy is likely highly unsettling. (Pat Robertson once actually condemned "believers" in aliens to stoning.) If we find a single extrasolar planet with life, the geocentric bias of the "Fundamentalist" crowd will be shaken. (After all, the "end times" depicted in the oh-so-popular "Left Behind" series signal the end of our world -- Earth -- as we know it. This leaves little or no breathing room for other worlds, whose inhabitants, if there are any, might be pressed to comprehend the thought processes of those awaiting the "Second Coming.")
What better way to avoid such messy implications than disabling the messenger? The first casualty will probably be the Hubble Space Telescope. And it won't be the last.
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