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"I was wholly addicted to watching Kojack, for as long as it was on television."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Automated Search For Habitable Planets | ||
| Automated use of telescopes and other devices to search the universe for Earth-like planets. |
Ran Argal gives his dimension shifting apparatus its head after moving out of our galaxy into intergalactic space, heading toward the great Andromeda galaxy.
| I was near enough it now to set my automatic astronomical instruments to searching it for a habitable planet.
These instruments were the wonderful ones our astronomers had perfected. With super-telescopic eyes each one scanned a part of the star field before them. And each mechanical eye, when it found planetary systems in its field, automatically shifted upon them a higher powered telespectroscope which recorded on permanent film the size, mean temperature and atmospheric conditions of these worlds.
 ('Cosmic Quest' by Edmond Hamilton) Tensely I turned the great battery of telescopic eyes upon the galaxy ahead. Then I watched eagerly as the clicking, sliding, impersonal instruments searched that great mass of suns. As each mechanical eye finished its record, I snatched it up and examined it... |
| Technovelgy from Cosmic Quest,
by Edmond Hamilton. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1936 Additional resources -
|
I can't think of an earlier direct reference to this exact idea, but take a look at this manual search for a habitable planet by EE 'Doc' Smith in Skylark of Valeron.
Larry Niven refers to this idea in One Face (1965):
Lourdi spent most of her time at the telescope. It was a powerful instrument, and Chanda told the Brain to find planets of nearby suns and hold the telescope on them while Lourdi looked. But even the nearest were only circular dots.
Can’t you order the Brain to search out a habitable planet and go there?”
“No,” said Lourdi, from across the room. “The telescope isn’t that good, not when it has to peer out of one gravity well into another. The light gets all bent up...”
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Cosmic Quest
More Ideas
and Technology by Edmond Hamilton
Tech news articles related to Cosmic Quest
Tech news articles related to works by Edmond Hamilton
Automated Search For Habitable Planets-related
news articles:
- Looking For Earth-Like Worlds With Nulling Interferometry
- Europe's Cheops To Look For Habitable Planets
- Automated Planet Finder Telescope Starts The Hunt
- NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) Looks Nearby
- Confirm 100 Exoplanets At Once! (With Video)
- Caltech's ET Laboratory Looks For New Earths
- Rapid Automated Search For Habitable Planets Needed
- Espresso Telescope Searches For Exoplanets
- NASA's Exoplanet Superheroes
- PLATO Spacecraft, Hunter Of Habitable Planets, Now Ready
| SETI Suggests Prospecting The Solar System Without Landing |
| Cislunar Space And The Space Lanes of Golden Age Science Fiction |
| NASA Moonbase Update |
| The Solar Oberth Slingshot |
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