(Photo : Wikimedia Commons/NASA)
James Webb Space Telscope (JWST) is among the telescopes that could detect technosignatures likes greenhouse gases.
Telescope Like JWST Could Detect Greenhous Gases
A new study suggested that extraterrestrials may have used greenhouse gases to make exoplanets habitable. If that's the case, searching for alien civilizations will not be that difficult because we have advanced telescopes like JWST that detect greenhouse gases.
Greenhouse gases are released during different industrial production processes, such as those used to create semiconductors, are recognized to be among the most potent and persistent heat-trapping gases on Earth. These gases include fluorinated forms of methane, ethane, and propane. The researchers hypothesized that the presence of these compounds in an exoplanet's atmosphere would indicate the existence of technologically advanced organisms, as these molecules do not occur naturally in vast quantities based on Earth chemistry, at least.
Our current telescopes may be able to detect extraterrestrial life if it exists on cold planets outside of our solar system and injects a lot of greenhouse gasses into their atmospheres to make them more habitable. Lead author Edward Schwieterman of the University of California, Riverside stated in a recent statement that even if just one in a million gas molecules absorbed infrared radiation from its host star, it would still result in a distinctive signature that the JWST and other space-based telescopes could see.
Per Schwieterman, if telescopes are already defining the planet for other purposes, we wouldn't need to put in any additional effort to search for these technosignatures. And to find them would be astoundingly wonderful.
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JWST Detects Methane, Carbon Dioxide in At Least 2 Exoplanets
There are at least two instances when greenhouse gases were detected outside Earth. In both instances the gases were observed in distant exoplanets.
NASA's JWST obtained the first conclusive proof of carbon dioxide in a planet's atmosphere outside our solar system in 2022. This observation of WASP-39 b, a gas giant planet orbiting a star 700 light-years away that resembles the Sun, provides significant new information on its composition and origin. The findings supported Webb's potential to identify and analyze carbon dioxide in the thinner atmospheres of tiny rocky planets.
WASP-39 b is a hot gas giant with a diameter 1.3 times larger than Jupiter and a mass about one-quarter that of Jupiter or about the same as Saturn. Its high warmth (about 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit or 900 degrees Celsius) contributes to its puffiness. WASP-39 b circles relatively near its star, just around one-eighth the distance between the Sun and Mercury, in contrast to the colder, more compact gas giants in our solar system. It takes the planet just over four Earth days to complete one circuit.
The planet was discovered in 2011 and was announced as a result of ground-based observations of the planet's host star's light periodically decreasing as it transits, or passes in front of, the star.
In 2023, methane and carbon dioxide were detected on K2-18 b, an exoplanet 8.6 times more massive than Earth. Webb's finding supports recent research that indicates K2-18 b might be a hycean exoplanet, which is an exoplanet that may have an ocean-covered surface and an atmosphere rich in hydrogen.
In K2-18 b, the abundance of methane and carbon dioxide and the lack of ammonia lend credence to the theory that a water ocean may exist beneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere. The dimethyl sulfide (DMS) molecule may have been detected as a result of these early Webb observations.
DMS, the most abundant biological sulfur compound emitted to the atmosphere, can only be produced by life on Earth. Phytoplankton in maritime habitats emits the majority of the DMS in the Earth's atmosphere.
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