Searching for Alien Life in the Universe? Don't Look for E.T.
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WASHINGTON — For the first time in history, humanity is within reach of finding Earth-like planets where life exists, but these extraterrestrials may not take the form of intelligent beings, experts say.
NASA's next-generation James Webb Space Telescope — set to launch in 2018 — and its larger successors will give scientists the opportunity to look for signatures of life in the atmospheres of planets outside the solar system, known as exoplanets. But these telescopes won't be capable of detecting whether the life forms are brainy beings or single-celled microbes.
http://www.livescience.com/46802-nasa-search-for-alien-life.html
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We are a LONG way from actually seeing life. At best we are just looking to figure out if we are really detecting planetoids or not. It's amazing how little we actually see of the things that we are excited about. And anything we see is much more ancient than us so we might easily see places "too early."
