Science Could Be Close to Mapping Out Alien Worlds Scientists
are making revolutionary advancements in how they study alien
planets. Recently, astronomers discovered that they could use
the process of reflecting starlight in order to create composite
maps of unknown worlds that would enable them to define
pertinent aspects of planetary life, such as land, water and
clouds. With no telescope in existence powerful enough to
capture the articulate imagery of distant planets, scientist
Nicolas Cowan developed a piece of software that can be used to
take snapshots of selected points of reflected starlight on an
extrasolar planet and enable the basic schematic of a map to be
composed. To test this software, Dr. Cowan applied the mechanics
of the program to distant images of Earth captured by NASA’s
Deep Impact spacecraft during the EPOXI mission. “The object of
this experiment was to see whether we could identify the colors
of surfaces on Earth, [and tell] how many major surfaces are
there, and what they look like,