London: British astronomers have claimed
that thousands of moons capable of supporting life, like those
shown in the popular Star Wars` flicks, could be scattered all
over our galaxy, and are likely to be spotted by 2014.
A team at University College London hopes to track the
habitable moons within the next five years, using a telescope
launched by US space agency Nasa earlier this year to hunt out
other planets.
According to lead astronomer Dr David Kipping, there
are more than 12,500 stars within sight of Nasa`s Kepler Space
Telescope that have the potential for moons orbiting in areas
of space where conditions could be favourable to life.
In fact, they have devised a new method for detecting
moons in other solar systems -- known as exomoons.
"For the first time, we have demonstrated that
potentially habitable moons up to hundreds of light years away
may be detected with current instrumentation. As we ran the
simulations, even we were surprised that moons as small as
one-fifth of the Earth`s mass could be spotted.
"It seems probable that many thousands, possibly
millions, of habitable exomoons exist in the Galaxy and now we
can start to look for them," `The Daily Telegraph` quoted Dr
Kipping as saying.
The Kepler Space Telescope, launched by Nasa in March
this year, will spend the next three and a half years scouring
the skies for Earth-sized, rocky planets that contain water
and so could support life.
But Dr Kipping said it would also be possible to use
Kepler to spot moons orbiting other planets by looking for
tiny wobbles in their orbit. By analysing the light reflected
from such planets they hope to discover what chemicals are
present on the surface, including water.
Team member Dr Ignasi Ribas of the Institut d`Estudis
Espacials de Catalunya in Spain was quoted as saying: "The
prospects we have in coming years to find habitable planets
and, even more, characterise them and look for signatures of
biological activity are just mind boggling."
Bureau Report
