James Kasting

James Fraser Kasting (born January 2, 1953) is an American geoscientist and Distinguished Professor of Geosciences at Penn State University.

He has served NASA in various capacities, including co-chairing the scientific working group for the Terrestrial Planet Finder.

According to Kasting's calculations, the Earth's oceans will evaporate in about a billion years, while the Sun is still a main sequence star.

[8] Kasting has published two books, The Earth System,[9] and How to Find a Habitable Planet,[10] along with more than 140 publications in research journals.

[2] In their popular 2001 work Rare Earth:Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe, Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee note: "Although many scientists have been doggedly pursuing the various attributes necessary for a habitable planet...one name stands out in the scientific literature: James Kasting.

[15] “Even if we search the cosmos and come up with a negative result, if we see a bunch of Earth-like planets and none of them have life, we’ll know we hold a very special place in the universe,” Kasting said.