Brendan Carty 3/7/13
Core Earth Science/ Ms. Davies
Doyle, Amanda. “Alien Life Could be Detectable on Planets Around Dying Stars” Astrobiology Magazine Online. 4 March 2013.
Are we alone?
This is the biggest question astronomer’s want answered. No one is going to tell us the answer
either. The only way we will ever
know if life exists on another planet is if we discover it. That’s just the kind of approach
scientists behind the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are taking. My article entitled, “Alien Life Could be Detectable on
Planets Around Dying Stars” talks about how scientists are using a new method
in trying to detect an earth-like planet beyond our own solar system. The key to this new method is detecting
exoplanets orbiting around a white dwarf star. An exoplanet is simply a planet
that is located outside our solar system.
A white dwarf, is a weak and dying star that is at its last leg of its
life before it dies out.
Scientists use a technique called transmission spectroscopy to discover
if a planet has potential for life.
How it works is that the scientists wait for the planet under
observation to come in between the Earth and its sun. When this happens, elements in the planet’s atmosphere will
be absorbed and a spectrum of the planet will be projected. However, until now this process was
incredibly difficult because the large suns that exist beyond our solar system
would create so much glare that it would be tough for scientists to determine
the sequence of colors that is being emitted from the exoplanet. Scientists behind the JWST have figured
out a simple solution to this problem.
They will use transmission spectroscopy on white dwarf suns that have
shrunk and are not nearly as bright as they once were. When an exoplanet
crosses in between the Earth and its white dwarf its element spectrum will be
clear and easy to see. This is
important because scientists will be looking for certain elements in an exoplanet’s
atmosphere that would suggest that there is perhaps life on it. Some of these element biomarkers
include oxygen and methane, elements that would quickly run out if there were
not something replenishing it.
Oxygen for example must be produced in large quantities to replace the
large amount that reacts with other compounds. Scientists will also look for planets that emit a color that
would suggest there are large bodies of water located on the surface. This would highly suggest that some
sort of life or another is currently living on a specific exoplanet. Currently we are aware of no such
planet that is orbiting a white dwarf because it is so hard to see such faint
stars. So scientists are hoping
the JWST will be able to capture the dull light produced by these old stars. A survey will be taken to find the
closest white dwarfs around Earth.
From there, these suns will be monitored until a planet can be detected orbiting
around these suns. There are high
hopes for this project. "We expect to find maybe one or two Earth-like planets that
transit white dwarfs, and are observable with JWST, *if* such planets at all
exist around white dwarfs," said Dr.Maoz.
This article if followed through
would be very important to everyone but especially people in the Earth Science
or astronomy community.
Discovering Earth-like planets that could potentially contain life would
be an amazing find. From that
comes the next step, actually discovering life on another planet. If this were to happen, it would be the
only thing anybody ever talked about for a long, long time. That day would be treated and turned
into an international holiday. The
discovery of life on another planet would be the defining moment of a
generation. It would perhaps even
unite our planet, if even for a moment.
The next step after that would be collecting and studying this
life. This step would take much
time, however. But before any of
that can be done, we must first try to determine where life in the universes
around us might exist. Using the
JWST, scientists will be able to do just that. Personally, I think finding life on another planet would be
the most amazing thing ever. This
article talks about a very new and exciting way about going about discovering extraterrestrial
life.
The article is very interesting and
I urge any future astronomers or Earth scientists to read it. The article was good in describing how
the process would work and how these scientists behind the JWST would go about
looking for potential life supporting exoplanets. However, the article does not get into great detail about
the actual telescope itself and why this particular model is special. I would like to know how this telescope
is different and essential to looking at white dwarfs. I am only left guessing. Perhaps because these white dwarfs are
so dull, the JWST is so strong and magnified that it is easy to detect these
dying stars and its orbiting exoplanets.
Another critique of this article is that very disappointingly it does
not list specific examples of a white dwarf or maybe even an orbiting planet
that is similar to our Earth in structure. It would be nice to know if they had a planet in mind they
would like to look at before they launched the JWST. Despite all my critiques, the article is very well written
and very informing. I had no idea
what transmission spectroscopy was or what its function was. I for one am truly excited about the
future of space exploration and have my fingers crossed that this JWST
discovers a planet that could support life.
Overall, I though Brendan did an excellent job with his current event report. The title of his report really caught my eye because reading about the possibility of alien life on other planets sounded very interesting. His report did not disappoint. Brendan provided us with all necessary as well as additional details to understand the new method that scientists are using to detect life on planets beyond our solar system. I thought that the format of Brendan’s summary was perfect. Before jumping right into the process and how it worked, he defined a few words that we would need to know in order to understand the rest of the summary. For example, he defined the words exoplanet and white dwarf. Brendan gave us tons of information on this topic and his ideas all flowed very nicely. Brendan also did an outstanding job in explaining to us the process of transmission spectroscopy, which is the process scientists use to discover if a planet has potential for life. Finally, his part about what scientists were looking for on these planets was very well presented. He did not just list what they were looking for, but he also told us why, which was very interesting.
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting to see the elements that scientists were looking for on the planets to compare it to Earth. These elements included Oxygen and Methane, elements that would run out quickly if there was not something replenishing it. Also, scientists look for a certain color in the spectrum that would suggest that there was water on the planet. What they were looking for did not come by surprise, however, I had no idea that they could make these observations just by looking at the planets spectrum. That was very impressive. Another thing that I learned from Brendan reports was why they had to use dying stars (white dwarfs) to complete the process. The answer to this question was interesting. Had the process involved brighter stars that were earlier in their life cycle like the sun, there would be too much glare that you could not see the colors in the planets spectrum. Therefore it was interesting to see that they used white dwarf stars, which were less bright because they were at the end of their life cycle. Using white dwarfs would create a clearer spectrum.
Brendan’s current event report had all of the details and information needed for the reader. It was very well written however the only thing I would say is that it was a little bit hard to follow at times. There was just so much information coming at you that at a point I got lost. After reading it a second time, however, everything was clear to me. In order to improve this review, Brendan could have condensed his information to present it in a less wordy manner. I just think that when he got into some of his more complicated areas of the topic like the spectrum, it was easy to get lost, and therefore condensing his information in a way that would be more understandable to the reader would have been very helpful.