New Way of Detecting Exomoons Broadens Search for Extraterrestrial Life
So far, the search for extraterrestrial life beyond our solar system has focused on finding Earth-like planets. And sure, planets are great, since we know at least one of them harbors life. But David Kipping of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics thinks that search might be a tad too narrow. In a new paper, Kipping described how current technology can be re-tasked to search for another life-bearing body: moons. Looking for extraterrestrial life on moons is nothing new. After all, the search for alien life within our solar system generally focuses on Jupiter's ice moon Europa. However, this is the first time anyone has proposed looking for moons with life outside of our solar system. The method suggested in the paper involves measuring changes in the orbit of large planets caused by the presence of moons. A similar technique, detecting the wobble of stars by the gravity of large planets,...