28/10/2020
Lisa Kaltenegger, associate professor of astronomy at Cornell University and director of Cornell's Carl Sagan Institute; and Joshua Pepper, associate professor of physics at Lehigh University, have identified 1,004 main-sequence stars (similar to our sun) that might contain Earth-like planets in their own habitable zones -- all within about 300 light-years of Earth -- and which should be able to detect Earth's chemical traces of life.
The paper, "Which Stars Can See Earth as a Transiting Exoplanet?" was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
"Let's reverse the viewpoint to that of other stars and ask from which vantage point other observers could find Earth as a transiting planet," Kaltenegger said. A transiting planet is one that passes through the observer's line of sight to another star, such as the sun, revealing clues as to the makeup of the planet's atmosphere.