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SCIENTISTS search for white dwarf stars in hopes of finding exoplanets that contain biosignatures of extraterrestrial life.
A research team has created a guide to help the powerful space telescopes of the future with this hunt.
According to Universe Today, Professor Lisa Kaltenegger of the Carl Sagan Institute explained: “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.”
He added: “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. “
One of the telescopes that is expected to help us find rocky planets orbiting white dwarfs is the long-awaited James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
It will be the largest, most complex and powerful space telescope ever built.
The telescope is so powerful that you can “look back in time”.
This is based on an Einstein theory that the more we look in space, the further back in time we see.
For example, the Sun is so far from Earth that it takes about eight minutes for sunlight to reach us.
That means that when we look at the Sun we are seeing how it looked eight minutes ago.
NASA wants JWST to look so far back that it can see how galaxies form.
Therefore, it should not be a problem for the telescope to look outside our galaxy at the light of white dwarfs and the planets that orbit them.
Some planets like this have already been found, but we won’t know how many there really are until we are better at finding them.
A team of scientists, including Kaltenegger, has created a list of spectral fingerprints that other scientists could refer to when searching for life.
Biosignatures are substances that indicate past or present lives.
Spectral biosignatures can be methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone.
Special telescopes can detect evidence of these substances by closely observing a planet’s atmosphere for certain visible indicators.
Now that a helpful guide has been created that explains them, you can help speed up your search for extraterrestrial life.
This study has been published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
What is an exo-planet?
This is what you need to know …
- An exoplanet is a planet that is outside our Solar System and that is orbiting its own star, as Earth rotates around the Sun.
- They are very difficult to see with telescopes because they are often hidden by the brightness of their star
- NASA sent the Kepler Space Telescope into orbit to find Earth-sized exoplanets that could support life.
- More than 4,000 exoplanets have been discovered so far, and more missions are planned to find even more exoplanets.
- A good way to detect an exoplanet is to search for “wobbly” stars because an interruption in starlight may indicate that a planet is orbiting it and therefore blocks light from time to time.
- Expoplanets are very common in the Universe and the more we resemble Earth, the closer we get to know if we are not alone.
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And, Elon Musk has plans to make his Starlink satellites “invisible to the naked eye.”
What do you think about this discovery of the rocky planet? Let us know in the comments …
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