NASA Claims Finding Life On Other Planets Not Far Away
LU STOUT: Welcome back. Now this week, a panel met at NASA headquarters in Washington to go beyond the philosophical question of whether we're alone in the universe, they looked at the signs, the technical advances. And their conclusion, a scientist looking for life on another planet like our own are a lot closer to their goal than people realize. Now Hakeem Oluseyi is the host of the program Outrageous Acts of Science. He joins me now live from Orlando, Florida. And professor Oluseyi, welcome to the program. This claim from NASA. I mean, what do you make of it? Will NASA be able to find new life beyond Earth in just 20 years?</s>HAKEEM OLUSEYI, HOST, OUTRAGEOUS ACTS OF SCIENCE: Well, it's a bold claim. And you know we really can't say ahead of time that it's actually going to happen, but there are compelling reasons to believe that it actually may happen. We now know where to look for these signs of life. There are good places to look within our solar system and on extrasolar planets. The technology is coming along, the science is coming along, so just as 40 years ago we could not necessarily say that we're definitely going to see extra-solar planets and today we find them in a very, very efficiently -- is now commonplace. We're at a similar place when it comes to life. We knew that the planets were there, we just had to find them. We strongly believe that life is there and we just have to find it.</s>LU STOUT: This is exciting stuff. You're saying that we now know where to look. So where is NASA looking to find new life out there?</s>OLUSEYI: Well, what happened recently is a team of scientists published a paper where for the first time they were able to develop an index that could describe the likelihood for life on other planets. And in fact there's a planet that's been found that is better suited for life than even the Earth in the Gliese 581 system. And there are several planets that have been found, maybe four, that are better suited for life than Mars, which we think has been a good candidate for finding life here in our own solar system, at least ancient life. So, not only that, as technology comes along, we can -- we're at the verge of making a very difficult measurement very commonplace. And that is as measuring the chemical composition of an extra-solar planet's atmosphere. So we have two space craft that are planned. There's tests to be launched in 2017. There's the James Webb space telescope to be launched in 2018 and we're going to see breakthroughs.</s>LU STOUT: Breakthroughs thanks to technology like space probes, telescopes, like the Keppler telescope, et cetera. Now when these discoveries do happen, what kind of life will be discovered? Are we talking about potentially advanced lifeforms or something more basic, more primitive?</s>OLUSEYI: Well, when we talk about extra-solar planets, more than likely what we're going to find are what we call biomarkers. We're going to find elements in the chemical compositions of these atmospheres that would indicate that there's life in the atmosphere, but it's going to be difficult exactly what type of life it is. But when we search within our own solar system, when we develop the capability to look in the oceans of Europe or on Soladus (ph), or visit the surface of Titan, something even more exciting may happen. We may directly detect life. And we don't know, right. Chances are it'll be single celled life, but it could be life unlike anything we've seen. There's even been scientists who proposed there is life here that we don't even recognize as life because it's so different. So, you know, it's best to keep an open mind.</s>LU STOUT: Best to keep an open mind. It's also a very thrilling development to hear that NASA scientists believe that they will be able to find forms of extraterrestrial life in the next 20 years, but at the same time it does seem that in the last few years space exploration has been going backwards. For example, the U.S. spaceshuttle being phased out. What are your thoughts at this moment of time about the appetite to explore space and to find these new life forms?</s>OLUSEYI: You know, finding these life forms and expanding is just a matter of will. Do we have the public will to invest in doing this? And I think that there's very good reasons to do so. Number one, what we see on this news show we've been talking about these catastrophes around our planet. Well, you know, we're going to have a planet wide catastrophe, it's coming. And when these things happen, they generate refugees. And humans are going to have to hedge our bets and we're going to have to diversify our whole planet. And we only have one right now, so if something were to happen then that would be it for us, right? But what we know is that it's going to take a long time to develop the ability to go to another world, to move large numbers of humans, and we need to find a place to go. So we'd better get started now. We need to invest. There's no doubt about it.</s>LU STOUT: And we need to continue this conversation another time and not only talking about finding new forms of life, but new places to move to as well. Dr. O, we'll leave it at that. Hakeem Oluseyi, astrophysicist joining me live from Orlando, Florida. Thank you so much. Take care.</s>OLUSEYI: Thank you.</s>LU STOUT: Now finally a Japanese icon could soon disappear. The Hotel Okura (ph), it is a classic design classic in Tokyo. It's remnant of the city from the 1960s. And CNN producer Pamela Boykoff (ph) she wrote of her love for the hotel in this piece for CNN.com. She said the hotel, and I agree with her, is a masterpiece of Japanese aesthetics and modernist design. It's been untouched for some 50 years. But it won't last. Now the hotel's main building, it is scheduled to be demolished to make way for a more modern structure. And there is now a potential online to try and convince management to save the hotel. You can find it at Save the Okura.com. That is News Stream, but the news continues at CNN. World Business Today is next. END