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.