What’s Next in the Search for Habitable Worlds

Intelligent Design the Future

Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture

Astronomy, Life Sciences, Science, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.3 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 3 July 2026

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS

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Summary

Are we common or rare? You can be on either side of the question and still be excited about the search for habitable planets capable of harboring life. On this classic episode of ID the Future from the archive, host and amateur astronomer Eric Anderson concludes his two-part conversation with Bijan Nemati, professional astronomer and expert on exoplanet search technology, to review the history of exoplanet research and share key details about upcoming NASA missions. Nemati is currently one of the lead scientists for the coronagraph instrument on the Roman Space Telescope, slated to launch in August 2026, and is also closely involved in early planning for the next-generation Habitable Worlds Observatory, which will be focused specifically on identifying signs of life on a small selection of exoplanets. This is Part 2 of a two-part conversation. Don't miss Part 1!

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0:00.0	ID The Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
0:12.0	Welcome to ID the Future. I'm Andrew McDermott. Today, host Eric Anderson concludes a two-part conversation with Dr. Bijan Namati about the search for
0:22.3	habitable planets. Whether you believe there's intelligent life elsewhere in the universe or not,
0:28.1	Dr. Namadi says we can all be excited about the quest to answer this age-old question.
0:33.8	In this second half of the conversation, Namadi continues to discuss his work on the Roman
0:38.9	Space Telescope, set to launch within the next two years. He also shares some intriguing
0:44.2	details about another future probe currently in the works, called the Habitable World's Observatory,
0:50.5	including how these state-of-the-art probes will work together to identify and learn more about exoplanets in space that have the potential to harbor life.
1:00.1	Dr. Namadi is an astrophysicist working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
1:05.5	As such, his discussion will get quite technical at times.
1:09.0	But hang in there and enjoy the complexity.
1:11.6	This is an update about an exciting area of space exploration that you don't want to miss.
1:16.9	Here's Eric Anderson once again to continue the conversation.
1:21.4	Okay.
1:22.0	So Roman's going up.
1:23.8	Sometime we're not announcing anything today, but in, you know, a couple years, 20, 26, 27,
1:29.0	sometime in there, we'll get Roman launched.
1:32.3	Yeah.
1:32.8	And so here's the way to think about it in terms of numbers.
1:35.5	In terms of what a fancy term in this world field called contrast, and contrast is a ratio
1:41.0	of the peak of the planet signal to the star signal.
1:44.0	And peak to peak,
	...

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