This Giant Machine Helps Find Aliens

Scientists say the best chance we have at finding alien life is to find a planet that looks a lot like Earth that orbits a sun that looks like ours. That’s because as far as life goes we have a sample size of one: our own planet. The trouble is the main way we look for exoplanets is through a method called transit photometry. This looks for tiny changes in the brightness of a star. Our star is VERY bright and Earth is so dim we’d be looking for a really tiny change at JUST the right moment and only if the planet actually moves in front of the star in the first place. We’re missing a lot of potentially habitable worlds! One idea could change that… #NASA #science #space #technology #shorts