The ingredients for life are spread throughout the universe.
While Earth is the only known place in the universe with life, detecting life beyond
Earth is a major goal of modern astronomy and planetary science.
This story is brought to you by Chris Impey and Daniel Apai, two scientists who study
exoplanets and astrobiology.
Thanks in large part to next-generation telescopes like James Webb, researchers like them will
soon be able to measure the chemical makeup of atmospheres of planets around other stars.
The hope is that one or more of these planets will have a chemical signature of life.
Life might exist in the solar system where there is liquid water – like the subsurface
aquifers on Mars or in the oceans of Jupiter’s moon Europa.
However, searching for life in these places is incredibly difficult, as they are hard
to reach and detecting life would require sending a probe to return physical samples.
Many astronomers believe there’s a good chance that life exists on planets orbiting
other stars, and it’s possible that’s where life will first be found.
Theoretical calculations suggest that there are around 300 million potentially habitable
planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone and several habitable Earth-sized planets within
only 30 light-years of Earth – essentially humanity’s galactic neighbors.
So far, astronomers have discovered over 5,000 exoplanets, including hundreds of potentially
habitable ones, using indirect methods that measure how a planet affects its nearby star.
These measurements can give astronomers information on the mass and size of an exoplanet, but
not much else.
To detect life on a distant planet, astrobiologists will study starlight that has interacted with
a planet’s surface or atmosphere.
If the atmosphere or surface was transformed by life, the light may carry a clue, called
a “biosignature.”
For the first half of its existence, Earth sported an atmosphere without oxygen, even
though it hosted simple, single-celled life.
Earth’s biosignature was very faint during this early era.
That changed abruptly 2.4 billion years ago when a new family of algae evolved.
The algae used a process of photosynthesis that produces free oxygen – oxygen that
isn’t chemically bonded to any other element.
From that time on, Earth’s oxygen-filled atmosphere has left a strong and easily detectable
biosignature on light that passes through it.
When light bounces off the surface of a material or passes through a gas, certain wavelengths
of the light are more likely to remain trapped in the gas or material’s surface than others.
This selective trapping of wavelengths of light is why objects are different colors.
Leaves are green because chlorophyll is particularly good at absorbing light in the red and blue
wavelengths.
As light hits a leaf, the red and blue wavelengths are absorbed, leaving mostly green light to
bounce back into your eyes.
The pattern of missing light is determined by the specific composition of the material
the light interacts with.
Because of this, astronomers can learn something about the composition of an exoplanet’s
atmosphere or surface by, in essence, measuring the specific color of light that comes from
a planet.
This method can be used to recognize the presence of certain atmospheric gases that are associated
with life – such as oxygen or methane – because these gasses leave very specific signatures
in light.
It could also be used to detect peculiar colors on the surface of a planet.
On Earth, for example, the chlorophyll and other pigments plants and algae use for photosynthesis
capture specific wavelengths of light.
These pigments produce characteristic colors that can be detected by using a sensitive
infrared camera.
If you were to see this color reflecting off the surface of a distant planet, it would
potentially signify the presence of chlorophyll.
It takes an incredibly powerful telescope to detect these subtle changes to the light
coming from a potentially habitable exoplanet.
For now, the only telescope capable of such a feat is the new James Webb Space Telescope.
As it began science operations in July 2022, James Webb took a reading of the spectrum
of the gas giant exoplanet WASP-96b.
The spectrum showed the presence of water and clouds, but a planet as large and hot
as WASP-96b is unlikely to host life.
However, this early data shows that James Webb is capable of detecting faint chemical
signatures in light coming from exoplanets.
In the coming months, Webb is set to turn its mirrors toward TRAPPIST-1e, a potentially
habitable Earth-sized planet a mere 39 light-years from Earth.
Webb can look for biosignatures by studying planets as they pass in front of their host
stars and capturing starlight that filters through the planet’s atmosphere.
But Webb was not designed to search for life, so the telescope is only able to scrutinize
a few of the nearest potentially habitable worlds.
It also can only detect changes to atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, methane and water
vapor.
While certain combinations of these gasses may suggest life, Webb is not able to detect
the presence of unbonded oxygen, which is the strongest signal for life.
Leading concepts for future, even more powerful, space telescopes include plans to block the
bright light of a planet’s host star to reveal starlight reflected back from the planet.
This idea is similar to using your hand to block sunlight to better see something in
the distance.
Future space telescopes could use small, internal masks or large, external, umbrella-like spacecraft
to do this.
Once the starlight is blocked, it becomes much easier to study light bouncing off a
planet.
There are also three enormous, ground-based telescopes currently under construction that
will be able to search for biosignatures: the Giant Magellan Telescope, the Thirty Meter
Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope.
Each is far more powerful than existing telescopes on Earth, and despite the handicap of Earth’s
atmosphere distorting starlight, these telescopes might be able to probe the atmospheres of
the closest worlds for oxygen.
Even using the most powerful telescopes of the coming decades, astrobiologists will only
be able to detect strong biosignatures produced by worlds that have been completely transformed
by life.
Unfortunately, most gases released by terrestrial life can also be produced by nonbiological
processes – cows and volcanoes both release methane.
Photosynthesis produces oxygen, but sunlight does, too, when it splits water molecules
into oxygen and hydrogen.
There is a good chance astronomers will detect some false positives when looking for distant
life.
To help rule out false positives, astronomers will need to understand a planet of interest
well enough to understand whether its geologic or atmospheric processes could mimic a biosignature.
The next generation of exoplanet studies has the potential to pass the bar of the extraordinary
evidence needed to prove the existence of life.
The first data release from the James Webb Space Telescope gives us a sense of the exciting
progress that’s coming soon.