8 ms·
First active chemistry on an exoplanet revealed by Webb telescope
- aaron_m04 4y agoThe researchers compared it to the photochemical reactions creating and destroying ozone in the Earth's stratosphere.
- greesil 4y agoI'd be curious to know what it would take in terms of telescope size to directly image a nearby exoplanet.
- tombh 4y agoI actually came across this video on HN a while back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQFqDKRAROI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQFqDKRAROI It explains the extraordinary idea of using the sun as a gravitational lens.
- spartanatreyu 4y agoYou might be interested in this video which talks about using the Earth's gravity to create a telescope with a lens roughly the size of the Earth (a terrascope): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgOTZe07eHA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgOTZe07eHA They also have a follow up video about using Jupiter to create a jovoscope and there's also more about creating a telescope using the sun (although since the sensor would need to be so far away from the Sun, we would essentially need to launch a different spaceship for each target that we tried to image).
- meindnoch 4y ago>Earth's gravity *Earth’s atmosphere
- mbrubeck 4y agoThis got downvoted but it is correct. The "terrascope" concept depends on atmospheric rather than gravitational lensing. The deflection through the Earth's atmosphere is about 1 degree, which is orders of magnitude more than you get from the Earth's gravity. Using Earth as a gravitational lens would give you a focal point about 15000 AU (a quarter of a light year) away, far outside the solar system. But with atmospheric diffraction, you can get a focal point within the Earth–Moon system.
- gateroid 4y agoI’m assuming the lazy downvoters had watched the recent PBS SpaceTime episode that talked about the gravitational lens approach in the context of exoplanet imaging, and just assumed that anything involving earth for lensing was gravity based.
- Etheryte 4y agoCool topic, but completely unacceptable to rant 20 minutes on tangentially related topics before getting to the actual issue at hand. I understand that Youtube prefers longer videos for monetization, but this is absurd.
- lupire 4y agoThis is the most entitled comment I've seen all week. The video has a clickable chapter list and a time scrubber, and the other chapters are closely related.
- gizmodo59 4y agoThat still doesn’t disprove the point though. I like videos that get straight to the topic of the title rather than blabbering. It’s very frustrating to see deceiving titles and the actual content related to the title is 2% of the entire video..
- aylmao 4y agoIMHO, the title is not deceiving. As of right now it's "Turning Earth Into a Telescope", and he talks about just this from a historic standpoint. If you were hoping for the technicalities of it, then I can see how it's not what you want. I know what I think is enough about the history of telescopes, so I skipped that part, but I thought the history behind how he came up with the idea fits squarely into the title.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> They also have a follow up video about using Jupiter to create a jovoscope Just for fun, if you wanted to form the word from Greek roots instead of mixing Latin into it, it'd be "dioscope". If you stick with the Latin, it's ambiguous whether the combining vowel should be -i-, agreeing with the Latin root ("joviscope") or -o-, agreeing with the Greek root ("jovoscope"). (And for completeness, if you wanted to do it entirely in Latin, the word would probably be "jovivide", but it is generally Not Done to form verbal compounds like that in Latin, unless the verb you're using is either ferre or gerere [both meaning "carry"].)
- adrian_b 4y agoEntirely in Latin, "videre" would not be the right corespondent verb for "scope" (from Greek "skopos"), but "spectare" (source of English "spectator"), so one could say in Latin "jovispectum" in the neuter gender (something that looks at Jupiter) or "jovispectus" in the masculine gender, though the latter would be more appropriate for the human who uses the instrument, not for the instrument. An example of a real Latin word formed in the same way is "circumspectus" (someone who looks around) => English "circumspect", so one could say in English "jovispect". Word compounds from a noun stem with the last vowel changed to "i" + a verbal stem + the thematic vowel, in either the masculine or the feminine gender, are numerous in Latin and formed from many verbs, not only from "ferre" and "gerere". For example there are many animal names, e.g. sanguisuga (blood-sucker = leech), caprimulgus (goat-milker = nightjar), ossifraga (bone-breaker = bearded vulture), vipera (alive-baby-birth-giver = viper) and others. There are also some insulting names formed in this way in Latin, but those are NSFW, so you may try to guess them, as they also correspond in English to the pattern *-*er, like "blood-sucker".
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> vipera (alive-baby-birth-giver = viper) This one seems like a stretch? I'm also curious why you interpret the formation as "noun stem with final vowel changed to i", as opposed to "noun stem followed by epenthetic i".
- 4y ago
- devoutsalsa 4y agoThat’s a rookie telescope. Let’s use the sun! https://youtu.be/4d0EGIt1SPc https://youtu.be/4d0EGIt1SPc
- krono 4y agoThere are actual (conceptual :D) plans by NASA to use our own sun as a gravitational lens to achieve just that. The concept is by Slava Turyshev and titled "Direct Multipixel Imaging and Spectroscopy of an Exoplanet with a Solar Gravitational Lens Mission". I'm only a casualstronomer and don't consider myself qualified to provide further details. Should be easy enough to find though!
- andyjohnson0 4y agoLink: https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2020_Phase_I_Phase_II/Direct_Multipixel_Imaging_and_Spectroscopy_of_an_Exoplanet/ https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2020_Phase_...
- comboy 4y agoSun size. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d0EGIt1SPc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d0EGIt1SPc
- contravariant 4y agoAs in one solar mass of telescope or just a telescope as wide as the sun's radius? The latter seems achievable, if tricky.
- lasc4r 4y agoIt uses the sun's gravity as a gravitational lens. You fly a normal sized telescope to the focal point. The theoretical resolution is pretty mindblowing, we'd be able to make out oceans and continents on exoplanets.
- andyjohnson0 4y agoThe main problem seems to be getting to the focal point, which is 500+ AUs from the Earth.
- colechristensen 4y agoJWST follow up in planning stages named for Carl Sagan is considerably bigger, optical, and being designed to be able to directly image exoplanets. https://youtu.be/BIgQpXObjFI https://youtu.be/BIgQpXObjFI
- dakr 4y agoWell, you can do it with an 8m-diameter primary mirror, because it's been done at Gemini Observatory. Keck and the VLT have directly imaged exoplanets as well. See this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_directly_imaged_exoplanets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_directly_imaged_exopla...
- eesmith 4y agoI suspect greesil means resolved beyond a point source. We've so far only managed that for stars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stars_with_resolved_images https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stars_with_resolved_im... .
- prox 4y agoAlready done! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_directly_imaged_exoplanets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_directly_imaged_exopla...
- CyanBird 4y agoI have got a bet with a friend going that by the end of the decade we will have found life, 500usd heh I am feeling quite optimistic, the spectroscopy of jwst has me quite pumped... If worst came to happen, I might still be able to eek out a win on my bet with ELT in Atacama... But I think that jwst will be enough!
- lupire 4y agoWhat telescope or spacecraft in existence is even capable of detecting life? Maybe a Mars rover could. JWST is only reporting chemicals inferred because of the way they change the spectrum of light in the atmosphere. That requiresassive concentration of one chemical.
- suby 4y agoHopefully you spelled out the conditions and confidence required for life being found, because I can see it being debatable. We might detect compounds on other planets which to our knowledge can only come about through industrial civilization, but one can argue that there's some other process that is currently unknown to us which could give rise to these compounds. It's similar to the phosphine discovery on Venus, which is indicative of life but certainly debatable. Though in the phosphine case I think there's debate over whether or not they actually detected phosphine? Regardless, I too am excited about the possibility of detecting signs of intelligent life soon.
- ksaj 4y agoLikewise, if/when we find life, how would we recognize it? We have some understood rule sets for life here, yet we have life forms that don't 100% conform to any one of them. There is no guarantee life on another planet will even have the same DNA structure we have, let alone adhere to the model we've come to agree on for Earthen life. We only have LUCA to understand our own life forms, and zero idea what became and begat LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor). The word "Common" is important there, because we know there was a lot of life before LUCA. I took an Origins of Life course that really opened my eyes about how complicated things get when looking for life at different scales.
- SevenNation 4y agoHere's the part explaining the active chemistry: > The team were also surprised to detect sulfur dioxide, which had appeared as a mysterious bump in early observation data. Its presence suggests a photochemical reaction is taking place in the atmosphere as light from the star hits it, similar to how our Sun produces ozone in Earth’s atmosphere. In WASP-39b’s case, light from its star, slightly smaller than the Sun, splits water in its atmosphere into hydrogen and hydroxide, which reacts with hydrogen sulfide to produce sulfur dioxide. Wikipedia has this to say about sulfur dioxide in our solar system: > On other planets, sulfur dioxide can be found in various concentrations, the most significant being the atmosphere of Venus, where it is the third-most abundant atmospheric gas at 150 ppm. There, it reacts with water to form clouds of sulfuric acid, and is a key component of the planet's global atmospheric sulfur cycle and contributes to global warming.[11] It has been implicated as a key agent in the warming of early Mars, with estimates of concentrations in the lower atmosphere as high as 100 ppm,[12] though it only exists in trace amounts. On both Venus and Mars, as on Earth, its primary source is thought to be volcanic. The atmosphere of Io, a natural satellite of Jupiter, is 90% sulfur dioxide[13] and trace amounts are thought to also exist in the atmosphere of Jupiter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_dioxide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_dioxide This doesn't necessarily mean that the the exoplanet has active volcanism, but it could be an explanation.
- 6177c40f 4y agoIsn't WASP-39b a gas giant? Is it even possible for such a planet to have active volcanism?
- TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y agoAmazing. Until today chemistry on planets outside the solar system did not exist. I love how the science advances the world.
- unsupp0rted 4y agoIt would be unbelievable and terrifying if it had turned out active chemistry on other planets didn’t exist.
- xcambar 4y agoIt would have been impossible to guarantee the absence of chemistry anyway. Only the discovery of its existence can end the search.
- unsupp0rted 4y agoIf we surveyed a million planets and never found active chemistry that would be sufficiently terrifying. It would be enough to convert a number of atheists to religion… or to simulation theory. Whereas new telescope = here’s some active chemistry as expected is business as usual.
- nigrioid 4y agoI'll bet it will turn out to be a piece of chorizo.
- qikInNdOutReply 4y agoImagine a ferrofluid, you could wiggle around a space via electro magnetic forces. You could create parts of a "mirror" at locations on demand, and sythesize the reflected light into a whole picture, without ever needing a huge, ground mirror. The whole optical body is only ever needed for us and parallelistic sensors.
- bvoq 4y agoThat then could be used to create a super high resolution telescope no?