Thought essential to life. Kepler 186f only 10 larger than the earth and only 490 light years today. The planet survey satellite which will launch in 2017 and James Webb Space Telescope launching in 2018 will help scientists discover more planets with potential bio signatures. The United States has pioneered the field of astrobiology and continues to lead the world in this type of research. Is a example of professional papers published published in se magazine between 1995 and 2013 illustrates the Significant Growth and growing popularity of the field of astrobiology. Between 1995 and 2012, the numbers of papers published on astrobiology increased 10 times and number of scientific reports that cited astrobiology increased 25 times. Astrobiology is a serious subject studied by serious scientists around the world. Reflecting this interest next september the library of congress and nasa will hold a twoday astrobiology symposium on what the society al impacts could be of finding microbial,
Rest of the world. The biggest gains for this country in that field are around the issue of equity. Equi when the biggest potential gains are getting people who are not within the s. T. E. M. Pipeline into it, i think about that out being a huge advantage that we have as a country because we have a tradition of trying to broaden opportunity for all americans. The s. T. E. M. Fields are if you believe that brain power ana capability are equally distributed across all differeny parts of our a society, then ret thats by far the biggest place to gain, because if you have role models that can inspire people from all different backgrounds, thats part of thew way how you will open up the pipeline. I think to get back to your peln first question aboute. Competitiveness, i dont think we fully understand what being more competitive in the Global Economy actually means in termse of how do we measure it. Thats a good place to start. I think the competitiveness, it im not sure we all have the same
Global economy actually means and i think thats a good place to start. Certainly as we create new processes with dealing with harsh environments, that brings us to have a skill we didnt have before. Thats one way to enhance competitiveness, assume iing th other thing, it forces us to think of ways to make things more Cost Effective in a constrained environment. That, by its nature, is forcing a number of companies now to look at their manufacturing processes, their development processes. As we talked about with stem, having a mission like this, and the many step it is takes to make this mission real, if we do our jobs right and we provide that inspiration of what this is, that will draw people, new people into our companies, you know. And that enhances by rejuvenating, and bringing a different mindset. As ken said we tend to have an older workforce right now. Infusing that workforce with a number of, you know, large percentage of just out of college. That will change the face of many o
Next 20 years depending on the financing. The second horse in that race is to build very large instruments that can sniff if you will planets and maybe find oxygen or methane produced by cows and pigs and things like that but biology in any case so you could find pigs in space i suppose. Thats again a project depending on funding that could yield results in the next two decades. Search for rse is extra trestral intelligence. Its to evesdrop on signals leaked off somebody elses world. That makes sense because in years en we only 100 after the invention of practical radio have the availability to send bits of information. I think that situation is going to change within everyones lifetime in this room. The reason is the universe is very fetnt with habitats for life. Congressman smith mentioned the number of stars in our galaxy but we know at least 70 of them have planets. An nt results from an astoundingly successful instrument says there are thousands. In our own galaxy there are tens o
Space may appear vast and empty, but it s full of cosmological objects that are invisible to the human eye. From our vantage point on Earth, many of these objects fall between astronomers and what they hope to observe, impacting what they find. This scenario was recently encountered by scientists at the U.S. National Science Foundation s Green Bank Observatory (GBO), who were attempting to study the Smith Cloud, tucked away behind dense layers of gas and dust in our own Milky Way galaxy.