The James Webb telescope provides evidence that CO2 exists in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. This is the first evidence of carbon dioxide outside of our solar system. The discovery brings humanity closer to the answer as to whether life existed there – or can exist.
The James Webb telescope can boast another scientific discovery: Launched in December, the telescope provided the first evidence for the existence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system, according to Natalie Batalha of the University of California at Santa Cruz announced on Twitter. This discovery is of interest for clarifying whether there is or was life outside our solar system.
Batalha and many colleagues studied the “Webb” data from exoplanet WASP-39, a hot gas giant orbiting a star some 700 light-years away. Their study will soon be published in the journal “Nature”.
WASP-39 does not provide the necessary conditions for the emergence of life. However, the fact that CO2 was detected here makes the detection of life on another, less hostile exoplanet more likely. In addition, the CO2 detection helps to clarify the question of how WASP-39 came about, said the US space agency NASA. With the CO2 detection, “an important threshold in the study of exoplanets has been crossed,” said Zafar Rustamkulov of Johns Hopkins University in the NASA statement.
WASP-39 was chosen to test the Webb telescope’s high-sensitivity infrared sensor because this exoplanet has a large atmosphere and takes only four Earth days to orbit its star. Every time the exoplanet stands in front of its star, it largely blocks its light radiation. At the edges of the planet, however, a very small amount of light rays penetrate and traverse the atmosphere of the exoplanet.
The Webb telescope registers the minute changes that WASP-39’s atmosphere causes in the light rays, allowing scientists to determine the gas composition of the exoplanet’s atmosphere. The older Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes were able to detect water vapour, sodium and potassium in the WASP-39 atmosphere, but their instruments were not sensitive enough to detect carbon dioxide.
The James Webb telescope, which was also built with German participation, was launched in December after decades of preparation. It explores the early days of the cosmos, just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang around 13.8 billion years ago. Astronomers hope to draw conclusions about the formation of the first stars and galaxies. The telescope also searches space for exoplanets.