Scientist scans galaxy seeking other Earths

David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
Monday, July 13, 2009

(07-12) 15:53 PDT -- From time to time, Bill Borucki wanders into a large white structure that looms like a stranded blimp near his office at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View and takes a look at one of the striking exhibits there.

The exhibition, on view inside the Ames Exploration Center, depicts NASA's latest venture into the deep cosmos - the Kepler spacecraft, which is now orbiting the sun and carrying an amazing telescope that will scan the Milky Way and hunt for unknown Earth-like planets that just might hold what Borucki calls "ET's home."

The physicist and meteorologist is the principal investigator - the chief scientist - of the Kepler spacecraft that's now trailing Earth in an elliptical orbit around the sun, peering some 1,000 light-years out toward the constellations Cygnus and Lyra with 145,000 stars within its sights.

The mission's goal is to discover a special class of planets the size of Earth in distant solar systems that he and most other scientists just know are revolving around their own suns many light-years away in the Milky Way galaxy.

more:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/12/BANK18E1OC.DTL

If I had another life to live, I would be an astronomer.

...that's the thing with science. You don't always know what will come out of the knowledge you gain. Sometimes it is used for ill, but more often it simply affords us a greater understanding of our universe, and can sometimes lead to something that nobody expected.

That's one of the things that makes science amazing, and one of the things that some people just can't seem to grasp.