"If we'll ever find life outside our solar system, it will not be an instant discovery. Save for the slim possibility of an intelligent civilization beaming a message in our direction, evidence for aliens will most likely come from scrutinizing nearby rocky worlds by using giant telescopes to study their atmospheres for gases that could hint at living, breathing somethings dwelling unseen on the planet's surface."
"Using JWST, for the first time, astronomers have managed to find tentative evidence for an atmosphere on a rocky planet in a clement orbit around another star some 40 light-years from Earth. Called TRAPPIST-1e, the planet is one of seven small worlds orbiting its host star, a red dwarf far smaller and dimmer than our sun."
Evidence for extraterrestrial life will most likely arise from atmospheric studies of nearby rocky exoplanets rather than instant contact. Giant telescopes can analyze gases in exoplanet atmospheres that could indicate living organisms, but such observations are challenging for sunlike stars and will take a generation. The James Webb Space Telescope has recently enabled atmospheric studies of planets orbiting smaller red-dwarf stars. JWST observations have produced tentative evidence for an atmosphere on TRAPPIST-1e, a rocky planet in a habitable orbit about 40 light-years away. Confirmation would mark the first detection of an atmosphere on a habitable-zone rocky planet beyond the solar system.
Read at www.scientificamerican.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]