intelligent life on other planets
their intelligent life in the universe we see evidence of life
the james webb space telescope cost 10 billion dollars and consumed
countless personnel it's also the most complex and powerful space telescope ever built by humans
so expectations are high for this brand new eye in deep space one of these expectations is what
scientists have been grappling with for ages is there life elsewhere in the universe are there
aliens there waiting to contact us one of the areas the james webb space telescope may find
to aliens or life signals is haitian planets can the new space telescope find life out there
join us as we dive into how the new james webb space telescope will discover alien life
few space missions have taxed nasa and the whole space scientific community
as much as the james webb telescope with a cost that ended up being 10 times the original budget
and multiple delays including the new cancellation of the program
by the senate everybody involved breathed a half sigh of relief if there is anything like that
everything about the jwst was complex yet the team launching it had only one shot at getting it right
this was because it would be situated where it was impossible to send a repair mission
one million miles away from the earth at a place known as the lagrange two point that orbit is
unique because it lets the telescope stay in line with the earth as it moves around the sun this
allows the satellite's large sun shield to protect the telescope from the light and heat of the sun
earth and moon jwst primarily observes infrared light which can sometimes be felt as heat
because the telescope will observe the faint infrared signals of very distant objects it
needs to be shielded from any bright hot sources including from the satellite itself the sunshield
serves to separate the sensitive mirrors and instruments from not only the sun earth and moon
but also the spacecraft bus to get an idea of the heat shield the temperature difference between the
hot and cold sides of the telescope is enormous you could almost boil water on the hot side and
freeze nitrogen on the chilly side the telescope will operate at about 225 degrees below zero
celsius minus 370 fahrenheit to have the sunshield be effective protection it gives the telescope the
equivalent of spf 1 million sunscreen against the light and heat of the sun earth moon these bodies
all have to be located in the same direction the jwst spent the first day after launch
executing the first and most crucial trajectory correction maneuver using small rocket engines
aboard the telescope itself it also released and deployed the high gain antenna to enable
the highest available data communication rates as early as possible during the first week the jwst
executed a second trajectory correction maneuver and began the sequence of significant deployments
beginning with the fore and aft sunshield pallets the next step was separating the spacecraft bus
and telescope by extending the telescoping tower between them the tower extended about two meters
and had to be extended so that the rest of the sun shield deployment could proceed next the sunshield
membranes were unpinned and the telescoping sunshield mid booms extended pulling the membranes
out with them the last step in the sunshield deployment was tensioning of the membranes in the
meantime other things like radiators were released and deployed jwst finished deploying the telescope
structures during the second week by unfolding and latching the secondary mirror tripod and rotating
and latching the two primary mirror wings and near the end of the first month it executed the last
mid-course maneuver to insert it into the optimum orbit around l2 the various scientific instruments
were also powered up kiros to the launch team because due to the flawlessness of the process
the service life of the space telescope has been extended previously nasa expected the fuel in the
telescope to last about 10 years but thanks to the efficiency of the launch the mission
can now extend to 20 years of taking breathtaking photos of the most distant places in the universe
however before the photos start to flood in the jwst will still go through months of fine-tuning
the individual components using the fine guidance sensor the jwst will point to a single bright star
and demonstrate that the observatory can acquire and lock onto targets will then take data mainly
with near-cam but because the primary mirror segments have yet to be aligned to work as a
single mirror the jwst will obtain up to 18 distorted images of the same single target
star nasa will then embark on the long process of aligning all the telescope optics beginning with
identifying which primary mirror segment goes with which image by moving each segment one at a time
and ending a few months later with all the segments aligned as one cool down will effectively
end and the cryo cooler will start running at its lowest temperature and miri can start
taking good data too this step will be followed by calibration and completion of commissioning after
which scientists will take their turns to use the telescope to study the universe you can see why
expectations are high for the jwst it will appear billions of years back in an effort to answer the
questions of how we got here and why we are here however in between those goals this powerful
telescope will attempt to find the evidence of life in deep space who knows we might find
aliens one of the places the jwst will look into to find evidence of life is the haitian planets
what are haitian planets and why do astronomers suspect they may host life to understand haitians
you need to know about exoplanets these are planets that are not in our solar system but are
revolving around their own sun astronomers suspect there are billions of exoplanets in deep space
however these exoplanets are notoriously tricky to spot because the stars they orbit outshine
them to date about 4 000 exoplanets have been identified outside of our solar system
scientists have looked into exoplanets to see if life can exist there when evaluating exoplanets
for whether they can host life scientists look at whether they are located within the habitable zone
around the stars they orbit this zone is a sweet spot meaning the planet is at the right distance
from the star for liquid water to have a stable presence on the planet and possibly support life
as we know it but now scientists are looking at a specific class of exoplanets haitians heisen
planets are hot planets covered in oceans with an atmosphere rich in hydrogen they are much easier
to find and observe than twins of our planet we do not have any heisen planets in our solar system
some of the heisen planets are bigger and hotter than our planet but researchers believe these
planets have large oceans that could support the kind of life that began on early earth and can
still be found in extreme ocean environments one of the most appealing features of these planets
is the fact that they have a larger habitable zone than earth or earth-like planets so they could
still support life even though they exist outside of the zone where our planet is required to be
in order to sustain habitability of the thousands of exoplanets discovered within the last 30 years
many of them are between the size of earth and neptune scientists use names like super earths
and mini neptunes to describe these planets which can be rocky like earth or ice giants
like neptune or exist somewhere between many neptunes are more than 1.5 times the size of
our planets they are still smaller than neptune but too large to have a rocky interior like earth
and beneath their atmospheres which are rich in hydrogen the pressure and temperature are likely
too great for life to survive however thanks to recent research by niku madhusidan and his
colleagues we now know that this inhospitable nature isn't always the case depending on the
conditions including size mass and temperature some of these planets could be habitable
their study is what led to the new classification of haitian planets these planets can reach up to
2.6 times the size of earth and reach atmospheric temperatures of almost 392 degrees fahrenheit or
200 degrees celsius underneath their hydrogen-rich atmosphere are oceans that span the planet
and microbial life could exist in these oceans some of these planets may be tidally locked a
term that means they permanently have a side that receives daylight from the star it orbits
and the other side is perpetually in the dark like our own moon in this case tidally locked
haitian planets may only be habitable on one side heisen planets are common among the range of known
exoplanets but they haven't been studied as much as super-earths perhaps the answer
to where life exists outside of our solar system has been within this known range the entire time
to determine if a planet within the habitable zone has the right ingredients for life scientists
search for biosignatures like oxygen methane nitrous oxide and ozone or biomarkers including
methyl chloride and dimethyl sulfide all of which are found on earth however when looking for these
various molecular signatures scientists have been focusing on planets similar to earth which kind
of makes sense as a place to start but haitian planets offer a better chance of finding several
trace biosignatures one example of heitian planets is k218b which is described as a mini neptune or a
super earth the exoplanet orbits its star the red dwarf k218 located some 124 light years from earth
was first discovered in 2015 through the kepler space telescope k218b has a mass of about 8.92
times compared to earth initially described as a potentially rocky world two independent studies in
2019 used data from the kepler space telescope the hubble space telescope and the now retired
spitzer space telescope to confirm that it did indeed have a rocky core the studies revealed
that this exoplanet is a water world with vast amounts of water vapor in the atmosphere one of
the studies published in the september 2019 nature astronomy notes that k218b offers an unprecedented
opportunity to gain insight into the composition and climate of habitable zone planets while k218b
has been described as a mini neptune and now is a heisen planet madhusiden said that most many
neptunes are not in that newly coined category of planets because they are too big or too hot
this is why the haitian planets straddle the boundary between super earths and mini neptunes
there is more to be studied about haitians and their possible status as hosts of life with the
jwst scientists can now stare better at these exoplanets most likely starting with k218b do
you think jwst will find life in outer space let's hear your thoughts in the comments section below