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A new method, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, could allow NASA's James Webb telescope to detect oxygen molecules in exoplanet atmospheres (a potential indicator of life).
As they [collide, oxygen molecules] block out a specific part of the infrared spectrum, and the new telescope will be able to see that and give scientists a clue to the distant worlds' atmosphere.
[...] "Before our work, oxygen at similar levels as on Earth was thought to be undetectable with Webb," Thomas Fauchez, from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and lead author of the study, said in a statement.
"This oxygen signal is known since the early 1980s from Earth's atmospheric studies but has never been studied for exoplanet research."
On the Earth, oxygen is a byproduct of photosynthesis, a process whereby living organisms convert sunlight into chemical energy. For this reason, scientists believe its presence could be an indicator of life on exoplanets.
Spotting oxygen on a planet might not be a guarantee that something lives there. Scientists have proposed alternative explanations that could create oxygen on exoplanets, and so it might not be a definitive indication that the world is alive.
Utilizing this collision induced absorption band at 6.4 μm, the scientists indicate that in some cases detection could occur within just a few transits.
Journal Reference: Sensitive probing of exoplanetary oxygen via mid-infrared collisional absorption$, Nature Astronomy (DOI: doi:10.1038/s41550-019-0977-7)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 07 2020, @10:56AM (3 children)
Note: the absence of oxygen doesn't mean absence of life; life (even on the surface) based on other chemistries (like chlorine and/or arsenic [discovermagazine.com]) is possible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday January 07 2020, @12:51PM
Or sulphur. Or thermosynthesis instead of photosynthesis. Both have occurred on Earth.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Tuesday January 07 2020, @02:45PM
Heck, life on Earth survived for almost a billion years without oxygen before photosynthesis evolved. In fact the introduction of oxygen poisoned almost all life on earth to extinction - what survives today are the descendants of the species that were able to survive such a corrosive pollutant, or even harness it as an energy source.
The real reason oxygen is considered an indicator for life isn't because it's terribly important for life, but because life is terribly important for oxygen. Being so volatile, free oxygen will rapidly react with...pretty much everything, leaving the atmosphere oxygen free, unless there's some active process continuously replenishing it. And life is at the top of the list of processes that could do so (in fact I'm not sure we know of anything else that could do so on the scale required)
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday January 07 2020, @06:31PM
It's possible, in theory, assuming that whoever did those studies didn't get something wrong. But with these kind of searches, it's reasonable to play the odds and look for places that have a kind of life that we know can work.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 07 2020, @11:02AM (2 children)
Launch the James Webb Space Telescope.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Tuesday January 07 2020, @12:52PM (1 child)
And if the launch fails, let me hope that it won't cost as much to immediately build a second one, since we shouldn't have to re-do the design.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday January 07 2020, @03:23PM
Why build one when you can build two for twice the price?
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