Last week, NASA and MIT researchers announced that they plan to expand the ongoing search for Earth-like planets outside of our solar system. “TESS”—the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite—will search for possible alternate Earths by looking for changes in brightness as planets travel in their orbits between their suns and the satellite’s line of vision. It’s a pretty rough way to find a substitute home planet, but what if TESS really does happen upon an extrasolar body that might be comfortable enough for our species to eventually colonize? Might there already be life on such a planet, and might any of that life look familiar to us? Say, like dinosaurs?
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