5 ms·
So I thought this would be big news, so I did some reading. Turns out that in like the past 5-6 years we've gone from "who knows how many habitable zone planet
by bloaf 4y ago
So I thought this would be big news, so I did some reading. Turns out that in like the past 5-6 years we've gone from "who knows how many habitable zone planets there are" to "we're finding them all freaking over the place!"
Does anyone have a good blog/news site that covers topics like this? Because evidently I'm missing out.
- chrsw 4y agoWe're severly resource constrained in this field. The harder we look the more we find.
- _dark_matter_ 4y agoWhat's the resource? Satellite time, compute power, grad students?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- adastra22 4y agoYes.
- flanked-evergl 4y agoAll of these are proxies for money.
- lostlogin 4y agoNo, money is a proxy for them.
- porcheetoh 4y agoMoney and intention I think. There’s plenty of money, but it must be paired with the intention to use it in such a way. This is what is rare.
- loxias 4y agoOver the course of the past 2 decades we've gone from "perhaps some day we'll find extra solar planets" to "most if not all stars have planets". JWST's already found water. At this point it's no longer a matter of if but when extrasolar life will be confirmed, and with which instrument. Might be JWST, might be WFIRST, might be HabEx.
- adastra22 4y agoBy the standards of astrobiology, none of those instruments are capable of detecting life. But they might detect telltale signatures of biosphere in extrasolar atmospheres, which will trigger decades of debate as to whether there is life.
- loxias 4y agoI am not a biologist. I could be entirely wrong in which case please educate me. :) My understanding was that life would be "detected" by finding chemical signatures in the atmosphere which could not exist at a "steady state" without biological creatures there doing things. Is this what you mean by telltale signatures? (A++ username)
- adastra22 4y agoYes, astrobiologists distinguish between direct detection of life and biosignatures. The latter are things for which we don’t have non-biological explanations at this time, but which we don’t consider adequate evidence by themselves for life. FWIW we’ve already detected bio signatures for life in the atmosphere of Mars (seasonal methane emissions). And maybe Venus, though that is less clear. (Thanks!)
- loxias 4y agoThanks for this, your phrasing makes the concept more clear. Can you give a (fictitious as necessary) example of what would constitute "direct detection of life", from an astrobiological perspective? Given our window to the universe is through telescopes I'm having difficulty imagining/distinguishing how to draw the line between "observed data for which we don't have any non-biological explanation" and something even stronger. Like, does "direct detection of life" only include "we sent something there and found life"? > we’ve already detected bio signatures for life in the atmosphere of Mars (seasonal methane emissions). And ~Europa~ Enceladus too, right? ~ISTR seeing some paper about plumes of water vapor, as well as chemistry for which we don't have any non-biological explanation.~ I found it -- I was thinking of in 2017 when H2, CO2 and CH4 were detected at a ratio in thermodynamic disequilibrium . Edit: I'm guessing "direct detection" in an astrobiological context would be something that builds on "direct detection" in an exoplanet context, a concept I already understand a bit -- friend of mine wrote her thesis on direct detection and imaging of exoplanets 15 years ago. :)