The title of this note is a quote by Seth Borenstein. Read the article here. This is the estimated number of habitable planets in our galaxy, based on the Kepler mission results of W. Borucki et al. , which main purpose is to find another earth, just like ours.
There are two scientists I want to mention here. James E. Hansen, and James Lovelock.
Borucki is mentioned in the book by Alan Boss, which I brought to class last time. Using the six degrees of separation concept, I am closely related to him, because Alan and I shared on office at the Physics Department of UCSB. Borucki fought hard to make that mission possible. Now we know, of a huge number of planets in our galaxy, where our ancestors could go in the distant future, only if we keep using our brains. As a species on this Earth, we are the only ones that can do this. Utopia or Oblivion, as Buckminster Fuller, wrote last century.
James Lovelock discovered Earth's physiology, i.e., the fact that our planet keeps the temperature, just right for life. Even though the Sun sends 25% more energy our way since the beginning of Earth, the atmosphere, keeps the temperature on the biosphere constant. If this feedback mechanism was not there, we would be getting 25% more energy on Earth, and we would have not even appeared!
Mother Earth is called Gaia!
Finally Hansen, is a courageous NASA scientist, who has risked his own freedom, to stop the most outrageous actions by industry, which are polluting the atmosphere, and risking a runaway green house effect, as it happened in Venus.
One goal of this course, is to convince you, that Astronomy is Relevant Science, it affects your life in fundamental ways.
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