James Webb Space Telescope is the first to observe a critical carbon dioxide chemical on planets outside the solar system, scientists announced Monday.
Research in The Astrophysical Journal shows that gas giants cannot host extraterrestrial life, but they provide lingering and mysterious clues about how distant planets form.
The HR 8799 system, 130 light years from Earth, is only 30 million years old. It’s a baby compared to the 4.6 billion years in our solar system. According to the study, a team of US-led researchers used Webb to directly detect carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of all four known planets in the system.
“New images of Webb’s two iconic systems, HR 8799 and 51 Eridani, and its planet, surprised researchers and provided additional information on the chemical composition of the young gas giant,” NASA said in a statement.
NASA
They used Webb’s coronagraph instruments. This blocks light from bright stars and gives you a better view of the surrounding planets.
“It’s like putting your thumb in front of the sun when you’re looking up at the sky,” said William Ballmer, a lead research author who is an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University.
Typically, Webb telescopes only detect deplanets by glimpses of them when they cross the front of the host star.
This “passing method” was the 2022 method of Webb indirectly detecting CO2 in the atmosphere of gas giant WASP-39.
But for this latest discovery, “we are actually seeing the light emitted from the planet itself, as opposed to the fingerprints of light from the host star,” Ballmer said.
This is not easy. Balmer compared this process to finding the fireflies next to the lighthouse using a torch.
These gas giants may not be able to host lives, but they may have satellites, he added.
Currently, there is an ongoing mission to find out if there is life in the vast oceans beneath some ice shells of Jupiter’s moon.
“Major evidence”
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is essential to life on Earth and is an important target in searching for life elsewhere.
CO2 condenses into small ice particles in the deep cold of the universe, so its presence can shine light on the planetary layers.
Jupiter and Saturn are thought to have first formed from the “bottom-up” process. During this process, small, icy particles gathered in the solid core, sucking in the gas and growing into giants.
Thus, the new discoveries are “important evidence” that distant planets can form in a similar way to our heavenly backyard planets, Balmer said.
However, how common this is throughout the universe remains unknown.
“Our hope in this type of research is to understand our own solar system, life, and ourselves compared to other exoplanet systems. “We want to take pictures of other solar systems and see how they look similar or different from us. From there we can try to understand how strange or normal our solar system is really.”
NASA
Astronomers have now discovered nearly 6,000 exoplanets, many of which are large and none are known to be habitable.
“The huge leap we need to make” is focusing on smaller, ground-sized worlds, Barmer said.
NASA’s Nancy Gray Sloman Space Telescope will use the Coronagraph immediately after its release, scheduled for 2027.
Last year, Webb Telescope Carbon dioxide has been discovered Hydrogen peroxide is located on the surface of Charon, the largest moon of Pluto.
Balmer hopes to use Webb to observe more four-planetary systems, but added that future funding is currently in question.
Last week, the Trump administration announced that NASA’s lead scientist had been rejected, indicating that more cuts are coming for the US space agency.
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