New orbiting telescopes could detect telltale molecular signature of life
18b has elicited much excitement. Swirling around a red-dwarf star about 110 light-years away from Earth, the distant world sits in a so-called Goldilocks zone—not close enough to its host star to be too hot and not far enough away to be too cold—that could allow liquid water to flow across its surface. That is a crucial condition for life as we know it.
Now astronomers have cranked up the speculation. Follow-up images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope suggest18b has an atmosphere containing large amounts of water vapour—the first exoplanet in a habitable zone to have this confirmed. Most exoplanets previously found with atmospheres have been gas giants, similar to Neptune or Jupiter.18b instead looks like it could be a rocky planet twice as big as Earth, perhaps covered in vast ice-covered seas.
This is just the start of such study of planets beyond our solar system. Astronomers plan to launch two new orbiting telescopes in the next decade—the American James Webb Space Telescope and the Europeansurvey—that will be powerful enough to peer into the atmospheres of exoplanets more closely. Powerful enough, perhaps, to detect telltale molecular signatures of life.18b is now the best candidate for a life-supporting exoplanet out there.
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