LIFE: THE GREATEST SCIENCE QUEST OF ALL TIME

Destacamos, como é habitual ao fim de semana, a coluna WHAT’S NEW do físico norte-americano Robert L. Park:

"James Watson and Francis Crick stopped by the Eagle after leaving the Cavendish Lab on Saturday, February 28, 1953. Crick raised his glass and announced to all in the pub, "we have discovered the secret of life." And they had; they had unraveled the structure of DNA, the secret of life on our planet. We share genes with every creature that crawls on Earth. But could nature have found other ways on other worlds to solve the problem of life? That would be an even greater discovery. We have seen no hint of life on the other planets in our solar system, though we haven’t yet poked into every corner. In any case, the search for life to which we are not related now reaches beyond the solar system to our region of the Milky Way galaxy. The Third Millennium began with the discovery of planets orbiting stars other than our Sun. We should be able to study these exoplanets with the world's greatest telescope, under development at NASA Goddard. It’s 100 times more powerful than the Hubble, but trouble looms.

The James Webb Space Telescope is in trouble. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), who chairs the appropriations subcommitte that oversees NASA, clearly saw trouble back in June when she requested a review of the NASA budget. The review came in this week. The bottom line is that the James Webb space telescope is a year behind schedule and $200 million short. Christopher Scolese, associate administrator of NASA, agreed with the report's findings, but could not see where they could find the money. I should tell him the secret, NASA is bifurcated. The NASA thats the envy of the world, we might call "Exploration NASA," its a science agency that discovers exoplanets and puts rovers on Mars. Then theres "Carnival NASA." It arranges trips to space for people with too much disposable income, and looks for water on the Moon to make rocket fuel."

Robert Park