NASA have produced a series of travel posters that they hope will convince you to give up Earth for another planet.
Yesterday, we found out that there are a few more Earth-like planets out there that we could theoretically, at least, go to if things go to pot here. Well, it's more likely that we might find signs of life as these planets are all in the "Goldilocks Zone" of their nearest star, meaning they would neither be too hot nor too cold, and could feasibly sustain water.
In a fun project, NASA have produced a series of tourism-board style posters to try and convince us that it might be nice to live on Kepler-186f or HD 40307g. Sure the names aren't catchy, but the posters draw on plenty of pop culture references and are pretty convincing, in particular since they all come with a little blurb.
"If plant life does exist on a planet like Kepler-186f, its photosynthesis could have been influenced by the star's red-wavelength photons, making for a color palette that's very different than the greens on Earth"
For all its charms HD 40307g is much bigger than Earth and has eight times the mass, so the gravity is much stronger. It also "straddles the line between "Super-Earth" and "mini-Neptune" and scientists aren't sure if it has a rocky surface or one that's buried beneath thick layers of gas and ice".
Meanwhile, Kepler-16b has two suns, which means that we might actually get to see the bloody thing every once in a while if we move there. However, "prospects for life on this unusual world aren't good, as it has a temperature similar to that of dry ice". Still, we'll take that over the rain.
All pics via NASA
