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"Science fiction operates a little bit like science itself, in principle. You've got thousands of people exploring ideas, putting forth their own hypotheses. Most of them are dead wrong; a few stand the test of time; everything looks kind of quaint in hind"
- Peter Watts
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| Search For Habitable Planets | ||
| Automated use of telescopes and other devices to search the universe for Earth-like planets. |
Ran Argal gives his dimension shifting apparatus its head after moving out of our galaxy into intergalactic space, heading toward the great Andromeda galaxy.
| I was near enough it now to set my automatic astronomical instruments to searching it for a habitable planet.
These instruments were the wonderful ones our astronomers had perfected. With super-telescopic eyes each one scanned a part of the star field before them. And each mechanical eye, when it found planetary systems in its field, automatically shifted upon them a higher powered telespectroscope which recorded on permanent film the size, mean temperature and atmospheric conditions of these worlds. Tensely I turned the great battery of telescopic eyes upon the galaxy ahead. Then I watched eagerly as the clicking, sliding, impersonal instruments searched that great mass of suns. As each mechanical eye finished its record, I snatched it up and examined it... |
| From Cosmic Quest,
by Edmond Hamilton. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1936 Additional resources -
|
I can't think of an earlier direct reference to this exact idea, but take a look at this manual search for a habitable planet by EE 'Doc' Smith in Skylark of Valeron.
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