The James Webb Space Telescope is shaping up to be one of the most significant breakthroughs
for humankind regarding space observation!
Being far more powerful than all other space telescopes ever launched by humans, the scientific
community has high hopes!
It will enable them to study very distant objects in space as they have never been able
to.
One of the objects the JWST will study is Proxima b to see whether artificial lights
are coming from the planet!
Yes, you heard right!
Scientists want to know if the lights coming from Proxima b are due to aliens!
What will the JWST see when it focuses on the exoplanet, and how does it affect you?
Join us as we dive into the James Webb artificial lights discovery on Proxima b that changes
everything!
Exoplanets dot the Universe and contain lots of secrets.
These are any planets located beyond our solar system.
Most of them orbit other stars, but free-floating exoplanets, called rogue planets, orbit the
galactic center and remain untethered to any star!
While exoplanets are plentiful, most of the ones discovered so far are in a relatively
small region of our galaxy, the Milky Way.
In actual fact, there are more planets than stars in the galaxy!
By measuring exoplanets' sizes using diameters and masses using weights, scientists can see
compositions ranging from very rocky, similar to the Earth and Venus, to very gas-rich,
like Jupiter and Saturn.
Exoplanets are made up of elements identical to those of the planets in our solar system,
but their mixes of those elements may differ.
So you can have some planets dominated by water or ice, while others are dominated by
iron or carbon.
Astronomers have identified lava worlds covered in molten seas, puffy planets, the density
of Styrofoam, and dense cores of planets still orbiting their stars.
The first exoplanets were discovered in the 1990s, and since then, thousands have been
identified using various detection methods.
However, it is pretty rare for astronomers to see an exoplanet through their telescopes
the way you might see Saturn through a telescope from Earth.
That's called direct imaging, and only a handful of exoplanets have been found this way, and
these tend to be young gas giant planets orbiting very far from their stars!
Since these exoplanets are hard to spot using existing telescopes, scientists have to use
indirect methods to detect them.
One indirect way is by measuring the dimming of a star that happens to have a planet pass
in front of it.
This is known as the transit method.
Another method used to find exoplanets is monitoring the spectrum of a star for the
telltale signs of a planet pulling on its star and causing its light to subtly Doppler
shift.
Space telescopes have found thousands of planets by observing transits, the slight dimming
of light from a star when its tiny planet passes between it and our telescopes.
Other detection methods include gravitational lensing, the so-called wobble method.
Detecting exoplanets is tough but studying them after detection is even harder!
For this reason, astronomers have not been able to explore one of the most popular exoplanets,
the Proxima b, as much as they wish, despite all of the great stuff they suspect it is
concealing.
For example, does the exoplanet host alien life?
But now, they have a new tool at their disposal; the James Webb Space Telescope!
The JWST isn't the first telescope to be put in space by humans.
NASA has a long history of using powerful observatories launched to space to study the
Universe!
One of the most iconic and powerful is the Hubble, which has faithfully delivered stunning
images of different parts of the Universe over several decades.
However, the JWST is more powerful than the Hubble by many magnitudes and also more expensive!
At almost 10 billion dollars, the JWST is the costliest telescope ever launched!
It is also the most complicated, with several parts being designed to fold up.
It was necessary to fold them up so the telescope would fit on the rocket launching it to space.
Compared to the Hubble, the JWST is located very far away.
The former orbits the Earth at about 350 miles while the latter rotates about the Sun at
a distance of about one million miles from the Earth!
This means NASA can't send in astronauts to repair or reconfigure the JWST after launch!
Thanks to its more giant primary mirror that measures 6.5 meters across, the JWST can capture
objects that are billions of light-years away, in effect taking us back in time.
In fact, the JWST will allow us to take baby photos of the Universe because we can now
get nearer to the Big Bang as much as possible!
The new telescope uses infrared to pick up signals from heat-emitting objects many miles
away.
To protect the space observatory from interference from the heat from the Sun and Earth, NASA
placed a shield under the telescope.
The shield, containing five layers, is so large it will cover up the whole tennis court!
NASA has unveiled a mosaic of the first images captured by the JWST, representing the early
stages of the telescope's 18 main mirror segments properly aligning before it reaches its full
potential.
While the image is admittedly blurry, it is a good starting point in the long process
of adjusting JWST's mirrors to take ultra-sharp photos of the distant Universe.
The 18 points of light that you see in the image all represent the same star, known as
HD 84406, seen by a different primary mirror segment.
Collecting the light used to generate the image mosaic took about 25 hours!
The 18 images of HD 84406 were pieced together from more than 1,500 images collected as Webb
was pointed to various positions around the expected location of the star.
The mirror will begin to align correctly following the various adjustments that the telescope
will make over the coming months, and the 18 stars will eventually become one as all
of the mirror segments are aligned to create a seamless surface!
Now, why are astronomers interested in the Proxima b exoplanet?
To understand this, you need to know its location!
Our nearest neighboring star is the Proxima Centauri, located about four light-years away.
Just like our Sun, Proxima Centauri has its own set of planets orbiting it.
One of the planets in the Proxima b.
This exoplanet was discovered in 2016 and has intrigued scientists ever since then.
Scientists have also discovered Proxima c and Proxima d, although Proxima d is still
awaiting confirmation.
However, much of the attention has been on Proxima b, for good reasons!
Because the planet orbits right in the middle of its star's habitable zone, it's possible
that liquid water — and potentially even life — could exist there!
Because of its Earth-like mass, scientists believe that not only could liquid water exist
on Proxima b, it could also be a rocky, terrestrial planet similar to Earth!
Proxima b orbits around a star that, while close to our solar system, is also much dimmer
and much less massive than our Sun.
The exoplanet is tidally locked and in synchronous rotation with its star, meaning that one side
is always facing the star and one is always facing away: a light side and a dark side.
In addition, it's unclear if Proxima b has an atmosphere.
However, If Proxima B has an atmosphere, the simple ingredients - water, carbon dioxide,
and rock - that are needed for the formation of biochemical cycles that we call life could
all be present and interacting on the planet's surface.
The planet lies very close to its star, completing one orbit every 11 Earth days.
The temperature on the surface of the planet could be between -90 degrees and 30 degrees
Celsius or -130 and 86 Fahrenheit.
What if aliens live on Proxima b?
If that is the case, there is speculation that it is improbable life could develop on
the dayside due to a constant stream of intense radiation from its host star.
The reason is that Proxima b orbits just 4.5 million miles out, or about a tenth the distance
Mercury is from the Sun at its closest point!
Radio signals have already been detected from the area around Proxima b; however, radio
astronomers believe this was likely just interference from natural sources.
So, because the side of the exoplanet that is free from radiation is always dark, any
civilization inhabiting the exoplanet may have to deploy powerful mirrors or require
very bright LED-style lights to illuminate their cities!
This can help us detect them using the right tool!
This is why a team that includes Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb has suggested that the JWSTcan be
configured to spot evidence of LED light on the planet Proxima b!
They suggest that using the near-infrared instrument on the James Webb telescope and
looking for the telltale signs of LED light waves in the light from the planet and its
host star, they will be able to detect this artificial light if it exists.
The team has investigated whether artificial lights could be detected on the dark side
of Proxima b by computing light curves from the planet and its host star.
These scientists considered two different scenarios; artificial illumination with the
same spectrum as commonly used LEDs on Earth and a narrower spectrum that leads to the
same proportion of light as the total artificial illumination on Earth.
They discovered the JWST would be able to detect LED-type artificial lights making up
5 percent of stellar power!
If James Webb is able to detect the narrowband light that is reminiscent of LED bulbs, it
will be because it will be able to characterize the atmosphere of the planet.
This will allow researchers to use instruments on the observatory to detect how much energy
transport occurs on the planet and then perform calculations of light curves to determine
whether they match those of an LED light source or not!
To come to the conclusion that it may be able to detect artificial light, Loeb and colleagues
used the JWST Exposure Time Calculator.
This tool allows astronomers to predict what can be detected in any given time period based
on pre-defined settings before the observatory launches.
It allowed them to determine the possibility of detecting different flux values and detecting
those with a wavelength that matches artificial light levels that should be expected from
a civilization forced to live in permanent darkness.
In that case, the lights shining onto the permanent nightside should be extremely powerful
and thus more likely to be detected with JWST.
The JWST will be able to show the existence of artificial illumination for standard LEDs
500 times more powerful than those currently found on Earth's and for artificial illumination
of similar magnitude to Earth's!
Let's hear what you think of the JWST discovering aliens of Proxima b exoplanet in the comment
section below!