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(serene music)

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- Welcome to another
episode of E.Z. Science,

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I'm Ellen Stofan, the
John and Adrienne Mars

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Director of the Smithsonian's National

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Air and Space museum, or Dr. E.

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- And I'm Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate

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administrator for science at NASA,

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also referred to as Dr. Z.

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- We're here today to talk
about a subject that's

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pretty near and dear to my heart,

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and that's the Hubble Space Telescope.

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You can see behind us, the
structural dynamic test vehicle

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of Hubble and off to the side here,

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at the National Air and
Space Museum, we have some

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of the instruments that
were actually brought back

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from Hubble, the ones that
weren't working so well,

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they had to put new
instruments up on board,

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so if you haven't been here
before, come and see this

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amazing history of Hubble.

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- To me this is one of the
real highlights in the museum,

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and kind of every time I'm
here I'm standing I'm in awe.

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So first of all, this mission
is what I would consider

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the most important discovery
machine we've ever done.

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If you look at that mission,
last year alone, there

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are close to a thousand
new publications written,

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it's not just a science
mission, it's a science mission

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enabled by human
exaperations, by astronauts.

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- [Dr. E] The fact that
the astronauts were able

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to go up in shuttle and
replace the instruments,

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constantly putting better,
more advanced instrumentation

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on board, has really allowed
Hubble over its twenty-nine

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years to completely change
our view of the universe.

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- So there's a story that
was out there about a planet

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called 'K2-18B'

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and here's a question regard with

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the hashtag 'E.Z. Science', and it said

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"Hubble just found water
vapor on an exoplanet,

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in a habitable zone, what does
that mean for other planets?"

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- So recently some scientists
actually discovered water

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vapor in the atmosphere of this planet.

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We now have over four thousand
planets around other stars

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that have been detected, a
lot of them are very large,

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so we're not really thinking
about those as sort of

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Earth 2.0. a place where we
could go to look for life.

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But the intriguing thing
is, we're pretty sure water

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is critical to life, life
here on Earth evolved

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in the ocean so when we
go out and look at planets

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around other stars, we're
looking for that blue planet,

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that ocean planet like the
Earth, so the fact that we found

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water vapor, was exciting but
unfortunately not sufficient

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because habitability
is a complicated thing.

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- Yeah, so found water
here, a water vapor but,

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there's many questions we
have about for example:

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Do these planets magnetic
protections layers like our Earth?

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Is the surface actually solid,
or would you just sink in?

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Like if something is a gaseous
type of planet, there's

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many, many questions so we're just at the

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beginning of that journey.

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- That's right and when you
look at our own solar system,

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obviously the earth is
habitable, it's been habitable

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for hundred of millions of
years, and yet if you look

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at Venus or Mars, Mars was
habitable for a very small

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portion of its history and
a lot of us feel strongly

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that there could be evidence
of past life on Mars.

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Venus was maybe habitable
for a very short time in its

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history and as early in
Earth's history, this planet

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was not habitable and as
our solar system evolves,

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Earth will become no longer
habitable so you have to

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think of habitability as
not just a condition but

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actually a phase that a planet
could potentially go through.

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- What we have done with
the exoplanets is we've,

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using Kepler, looked at one part of the

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sky and just stared at it.

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And from that we managed to
do a tally of exoplanets,

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so we know that for every
star at least, there's one

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exoplanet out there,
most of those exoplanets

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live in systems just like we do.

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There's other planets in our solar system,

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what we're now doing with
TESS is we're looking at

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the entire sky, to really
find the closest such things

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to investigate and like you said,

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there's very little we know about this.

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It's very critical to be
able to follow up with

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telescopes like this one,
the Hubble Space Telescope

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but also James Webb that's coming out in

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just a couple of years out there.

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- We're incredibly excited
about the James Webb telescope

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because if you think of
TESS, Kepler, Hubble,

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finding these exoplanets
and getting a little bit

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of information, James
Webb is really gonna be

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able to takes us to the next level.

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- What's really amazing
about Webb, is when

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Webb was conceived early on, exoplanets

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were kind of a side story.

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Right now, it's one of
the key stories because

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we discovered this abundance of exoplanets

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and we have an abundance
of questions, many, many

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questions that we didn't
know how to ask before.

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- So what the Webb telescope
can do, is it can look at

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much higher resolution of
the atmospheres of some of

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these planets around other stars.

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Not just looking for water
vapor, but also gasses like

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carbon dioxide, methane
and it's these combinations

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of gasses that we're looking for.

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The presence of water vapor
isn't sufficient for life,

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but if you see a mixture of
gasses and especially if those

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gasses seem to be out of
equilibrium, or there's something

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causing an imbalance in the
gasses, chemically and the

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atmosphere, that starts to make us think,

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not only could that planet be habitable,

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but is it actually inhabited.

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When I started out as a
planetary scientist, you know,

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there were nine planets
and then because of the

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declassification of Pluto
we went down to eight,

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but for kids who are students
now, by the time they're

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ready to become planetary
scientists, which of course

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they're all gonna do, they are gonna be

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thousands of planets for them to study.

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And we got another questions on E.Z.

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Science it's asking about TESS,

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"What is the transiting
exo-planet survey satellite?

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How does that actually work?"

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- What the TESS mission is
doing, it's looking in a large

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part of the sky and it's staring
at it and as it's staring,

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it's looking at the
stability of light, so every

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once in a while, one
of those exoplanets is

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going right in front of
the star that it's around,

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and when it does so it every so faintly,

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reduces the light of that star, creating

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a transient feature and so that's what

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we're observing for all those
stars, in that part of the sky

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that TESS is looking at.

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- And we can then use,
how the light has dimmed

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to say what's the size of that planet,

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what kind of orbit it's in,
which really helps us then

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start to nail down which of
these planets are more like

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Earth, which ones are more
like Jupiter, we're just

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about out of time, I'm
sorry to say, thank you

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for joining us for another
episode of E.Z. Science.

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- And please keep sending those questions,

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with hashtag 'E.Z. Science'
so we can answer them