so far the biggest issue with studying
exoplanets in general is that they are
usually only indirectly study about
astronomers may see the gravitational
tug of an exoplanet on its parent star
and work out things like the planets
mass from that or even atmospheric data
can be collected or inferred from
methods like observing planetary
transits but overall direct observation
of exoplanets remains very difficult
this is set to change as new
instrumentation comes online and not
only could we determine what an
exoplanet is like we may also very well
be able to tell if it has life analogs
of plants and even civilizations present
on their surfaces for an in-depth
discussion of habitable exoplanet
possibilities I recently spoke with dr.
avi Loeb of Harvard about it but also
lots of other topics within astrobiology
we covered a lot of bases this interview
debuts on my new channel event horizon
with jmg later today at 5 p.m. central
for those that wanted longer content for
me this one went an hour and a half and
is just an amazing interview so check
that out later today past that the
emerging main way to study potentially
habitable exoplanets is by studying the
composition of their atmospheres we know
from earth that life profoundly affects
our atmospheric composition with what
would appear to other civilizations to
be bizarre concentrations of oxygen and
methane where perhaps life would be the
most likely source except it's not a
dead ringer there would always be the
possibility that abiotic geological or
chemical processes were creating these
gases in some odd way if we see these
kinds of odd mixes of gases and
exoplanet atmospheres
we will need more to say definitively
that they are due to life than merely
the gases alone luckily there are other
things astronomers can look at in a
paper by Svetlana V Purdue Ghana and
colleagues linked below they detail the
other ways we might confirm if an
exoplanet suspect of supporting life
actually does seemingly the best way to
do this would be to attempt to image the
surface of the exoplanet itself while we
are very far from an actual detailed
image of an exoplanet we very likely
would have to go to that exoplanet for
that there are things that can be
gleaned from very distant direct imaging
in addition to studying atmospheric
gases it may be possible to eat
if an exoplanet experiences seasons what
it's cloud cover is like and if
analogues of plant life are producing
oxygen through photosynthesis through a
similar structure to earth plants we may
even see direct evidence of that because
plants at least ours become highly
reflective in infrared creating a
so-called red edge that could
hypothetically be detected and of course
there's always the possibility of
picking up techno signatures if an EXO
civilization exists on a planet
the authors detail that there are two
approaches for imaging exoplanets direct
and indirect direct would be to
construct bigger telescopes or
interferometers such as the proposed EXO
life finder telescope either based on
earth or in space or to send out
spacecraft on long-term journeys to
directly image these planets though
that's a bit taller of an order by
nature they predict that if funding is
available current technology could
produce an exoplanet imaging telescope
within a decade indirectly studying
exoplanet details is more Within Reach
in fact we've been doing it for some
time with solar system objects this
comes from analyzing the light curves of
the planets themselves essentially
studying the characteristics of the
light coming from them either reflecting
off them or showing variations in the
light curves here the James Webb Space
Telescope will be invaluable especially
when studying potentially habitable
exoplanets in infrared with rocky
planets studying albedo as exoplanets
orbit and rotate could allow scientists
to work out features present on an
exoplanets surface though only the
largest features could be worked out
even the colors of these features might
be discerned such as white for an ice
cap or brown for a continent or if you
were looking back at earth green for
vegetation though the actual color of
exoplanets probably wouldn't be green
and there's always the chance of
spotting a techno signature quite a few
have been put forth that we might detect
such as huge photovoltaic systems ie
solar panels that would reflect light in
a recognizable way ultimately though the
indirect method and the direct method
will yield clues to how exoplanets are
especially close ones like Proxima B but
they won't be breathtaking high
resolution images unless we send a
spacecraft there or build telescopes of
such a size that they would probably be
prohibitively expensive for the
foreseeable future but there may be
other ways such as using the Sun's
gravitational lensing to magnify
planets behind it that may be far easier
to accomplish thanks for listening I'm
futurist and science fiction author John
Michael Cody a currently worried about
detecting EXO plants while plant
intelligence is a subject of some debate
earth plants are actually quite
unsettling in other ways they can
reproduce at a distance you can nearly
kill them and they just regenerate and
some of them can live for centuries or
more the moment the human species
becomes complacent in our 100,000 year
war of attrition with them they'll pop
through the pavement take back over
thrive and win and that's not even
broaching the concept of carnivorous
plants the worst kind especially if
you're an insect and be sure to check
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universe in which we live