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Powerful cosmos survey tools such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), slated for launch next year, will be used to analyze the planets’ biological signature, traces of life. NASA will use the tool to search for life in the cosmos, or at least that will be one of its purposes.
Now, research has found that the best place to search for biosignatures is on rocky planets orbiting white dwarf stars.
White dwarfs are dead stars that have shrunk, a fate that awaits our own Sun in about five billion years.
As they shrink, they pull on the nearby material. Because white dwarfs are so much weaker, scientists can analyze materials without the glow of a relatively new star.
Also, white dwarf stars tend to be older than others, which logically means that life has had a better chance of evolving over billions of years.
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A new study published in Astrophysical Journal Letters also claimed that planets around these stars are more likely to be rocky and Earth-like.
Lisa Kaltenegger, associate professor of astronomy at the College of Arts and Sciences and director of the Carl Sagan Institute, said: “The rocky planets around white dwarfs are interesting candidates to characterize because their hosts are not much larger than planets the size from the earth.
“We wanted to know if the light from a white dwarf, a long-dead star, would allow us to detect life in a planet’s atmosphere if it were there.”
“If we find signs of life on planets orbiting under the light of long-dead stars, the next intriguing question would be whether life survived the star’s death or whether it started again, a second genesis, so to speak” .
JWST has yet to undergo testing before its scheduled launch in 2021, when it will replace the old Hubble telescope as the first set of eyes in the sky.
Scientists are optimistic that JWST will help unravel the mysteries of the Universe and potentially find extraterrestrial life.
The infrared machine is so powerful that it will reach the farthest realms and the first moments of space and time.
And the JWST, named after NASA’s second administrator, James Webb, who served from 1961 to 1968 and who played a major role in the Apollo missions, has the ability to scan thousands of planets for extraterrestrial life, to even though those planets are thousands of light. -years away.
In addition to looking beyond in space, it will accurately measure the content of water, carbon dioxide, and other components in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, a planet outside our solar system, and it will also inform scientists more about the size and distance from these planets. from your host stars.
