Thursday, 7 March 2013

astrobiology - Could the James Webb Space Telescope detect biosignals on exoplanets?

From what I understand, James Webb, if used in conjunction with a successful starshade (being developed at MIT), should be able to detect close in planets orbiting nearby stars. However, getting good atmospheric spectra of these planets directly (from planet's blackbody IR emission) is unlikely. What we must hope for is that TESS, which should be going up in 2017, will find a few nearby stars with transiting planets. Then, James Webb will be able to look for atmospheric absorption lines from stellar light passing through a planet's atmosphere during transit. This method may still be limited to large (Jupiter size) planets.
In an ideal situation (say looking at absorption lines of a super-earth) there are many "bio-signatures", but one of the easiest to detect would be an ozone line in the infrared. By itself, this would not be proof, even though there would need to be a constant replenishing source of O2 in the atmosphere to maintain the O3. If methane could also be found we could rightly get VERY excited since methane and oxygen don't co-exist very well.

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