Scientists to Look for Signs of Life in Newly Discovered Exoplanet

Researchers will try to determine whether there are traces of life around a star other than our Sun.

Scientists to Look for Signs of Life in Newly Discovered Exoplanet

Photo Credit: UChicago News/ Illustration by José A. Caballero and Javier Bollaín

Artist's concept of new planet, Gliese 486 b, located just over two dozen light-years from Earth

Highlights
  • The name of the exoplanet is Gliese 486b and it is 26 light years away
  • It is about 30 percent larger than Earth
  • Gliese 486b is not habitable with temperatures around 430 degrees Celsius
Advertisement

Searching for traces of life on Mars, like NASA is doing, is one thing.

But scientists are also looking further afield. Could it be found beyond our solar system?

A study published on Thursday in the prestigious journal Science reveals the discovery of a new exoplanet that could be instrumental in the hunt.

Researchers will try to determine whether there is an atmosphere on the "super-Earth" and traces of life around a star other than our Sun.

"The end of the road is finding biomarkers or biosignatures in the atmospheres of exoplanets, which is signs of life on habitable Earth-like planets," said Jose Caballero, an astronomer at Spain's Centro de Astrobiologia and one of the co-authors of the study.

About 4,000 exoplanets have been discovered during the past 25 years and some have been found to have an atmosphere.

But these are "gaseous planets or icy planets," Caballero told AFP, and planets the size of Earth have not been investigated yet.

The latest discovery opens up the possibility for researchers to study an exoplanet that is "rocky in nature, like the Earth," he said.

The name of the exoplanet is Gliese 486b and it is "only" 26 light years away. 

It is about 30 percent larger than Earth but with a mass 2.8 times that of our planet and is located in what is called a habitable zone around a star.

To identify it, researchers used two methods: "transit photometry" - slight variations in a star's brightness as a planet passes in front of it - and "Doppler radial velocity," which measures the "wobbling" of stars from the gravitational pull of orbiting planets.

'Have to start with something'
Since Gliese 486b is very near its star, Gliese 486, it takes only slightly less than 1.5 days to complete an orbit around it.

"We surveyed about 350 small red-dwarf stars for signs of low-mass planets," said Trifon Trifonov, a researcher with the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and the lead author of the study involving contributions from five continents.

Trifonov said Gliese 486b is not habitable with temperatures ranging around 430 degrees Celsius.

"The proximity to the red dwarf Gliese 486 heats the planet significantly, making its landscape hot and dry, interspersed with volcanos and glowing lava rivers," Trifonov said.

At the same time, Caballero said "if our planet has an atmosphere, then any planet at wider separation (from its star), and with roughly the same planet characteristics... will also have an atmosphere."

If it doesn't have an atmosphere then the other planets in the orbit will not be habitable either.

"We have to start with something," Caballero said.

Trifonov said Gliese 486b is a "remarkable discovery, which will likely become the 'Rosetta Stone' for atmospheric investigations of rocky exoplanets."

He is anxiously awaiting the deployment later this year of the James Webb Space Telescope.

It should allow researchers to tell no earlier than three years from now whether the exoplanet has an atmosphere and its composition.

And eventually, in a couple of decades, to tell whether there are any traces of life, Caballero said.


Is Samsung Galaxy F62 the best phone under Rs. 25,000? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.

Affiliate links may be automatically generated - see our ethics statement for details.
Comments

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.

Further reading: Mars, NASA
Amazon Opens Checkout-Free UK Grocery Store – Its First Outside US
Redmi K40 Pro, Redmi K40 May Launch in India as Mi 11X Pro and Mi 11X, Internal Code Suggests
Share on Facebook Gadgets360 Twitter Share Tweet Snapchat Share Reddit Comment google-newsGoogle News
 
 

Advertisement

Follow Us

Advertisement

© Copyright Red Pixels Ventures Limited 2024. All rights reserved.
Trending Products »
Latest Tech News »