Predator Vision

Believe it or not, there's a lot that can be learned from Sci-Fi movies. Take the movie Predator for instance. The villain, an extra-terrestrial warrior with way too many fun gadgets uses IR (Infra-Red) vision quite frequently to find his prey.

Human "prey" as seen by a Predator

 The scientists at NASA may have watched this movie and thought, "Hey if the Predator can use IR vision to find his prey, we should be able to use it to find cool hidden things in space!" and thus created the Spitzer Space Telescope.

 A "Superbubble" seen in IR vision from the Spitzer Telescope

There happens to be a lot of stray dust and gasses hanging around in space, obscuring galactic cores and creating nice hiding spots for distant stars. The Spitzer, with IR vision, can see through these dust clouds and snap a picture of the heat you cant see with the bare eye. The capabilities of the Spitzer have let scientists find a young star, approximately 16 million years old, with a warm belt of dust sitting right in the "habitable" zone with another ring of icy dust further out. These two belts of dust may be in just the right position to create an earth-like planet.

Artist's concept of the young star and two dust belts.

Fortunately for us, NASA has extended funding for the Spitzer out to 2016, so hopefully we can find more stars out there with the capability to create habitable planets.

 The Predator approves of this post.

-Nolan Goodweiler