translated from Spanish: Expert hopes that, by 2030, has located hundreds of habitable planets

“I am more optimistic about first to find life on exoplanets. Because of the diversity. There are planets so different that it would be surprised if any of them were capable of sustaining a way of life,”explained the French scientist in an interview…
Lecavelier des Etangs presides over the Commission of exoplanets and Solar system within the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which held until Friday in Vienna its general Assembly.
The astrophysicist recalls that already have detected almost 4,000 of these bodies since two decades ago moved the first exoplanets, a number that continues to increase.
Exoplanetas Lecavelier des Etangs said, in addition, there is no two exoplanets that are equal and that are discovering things that were not expecting and that even were considered impossible.
“With the exoplanets we are discovering a new field that goes beyond our imagination,” he said, and pointed to the existence of planets that will “evaporate”, which are so close to the star around which orbit its atmosphere “boils”.
“It would be boring if all the planets were like the Solar system,” he said.
This researcher from Institut d’Astrophysique of Paris ensures that the pace of discovery of planets will continue to accelerate, and that the discoveries will be doubled in the next five to ten years, and the number of detected potentially habitable bodies, today a couple dozen at most, will be fired.
“At the end of the next decade, by 2030, we will have hundreds, if not thousands, of habitable planets,” he said.
Because of this variety, Lecavelier des Etangs considered possible discovery of extraterrestrial life in the coming decades.
“I don’t know if it will be in five or forty years, but I’d be surprised it was in more than fifty”, ventured to calculate.
Intelligent civilization Lecavelier des Etangs explained that, although the scientific community are still minority who believe in the possibility of finding an intelligent civilization, what does already not in doubt is the sense of the search for extraterrestrial life.
“The search for life is not science fiction. There are people working today to detect traces of life on exoplanets. It’s pure science,”he said.
On the other hand, the possibility of traveling to these exoplanets enters the world of fantasy.
“The search for life, even discover an intelligent civilization, is still science.” “Thinking about moving to those planets, that is science fiction”, said.
Regarding the possibilities of locating evidence or signs of life on exoplanets, Lecavelier des Etangs explained that the detection of cocktails of molecules, including ozone and oxygen, may be evidence of that life and that within a few decades it will be possible detect them in those distant bodies.
A life, that if it is, will be very different from the Earth, and difficult to characterize, recognized expert, who, on the other hand, recalls that even debates on the definition of life.
“I’m pretty sure that, very soon, we will detect something extremely interesting, and some people will believe it is life, and others do not”, summarizes.
Exoplanetologia in general, Lecavelier des Etangs compared the importance of the exoplanetologia that was the 20th century Cosmology and said that it is the great new chapter of Astrophysics in the 21st century.
Just due to the accumulation of new knowledge, the IAU Commission of exoplanets today discussed a proposal to modify the provisional definition of Exoplanet drafted in 2003.
That definition established the condition that the planet orbitara a star or his remains.
Now, intends to admit as those which dwarf orbiten Exoplanet Brown, not as massive as the star objects and in whose core hydrogen fusion is not given, but neither can be considered gaseous giant planets.
But the new definition, which must still be official, establishes that the relationship of domain of the main object on the planet orbiting it, must be clear whose mass must be at least 25 times lower.

Original source in Spanish