Among the most intriguing types of exoplanet expected to be orbiting distant stars is the "water world," planets that are liquid to a far, far greater extent than on Earth. Astronomers have theorized the existence of such planets and several candidates have been put forward, though not confirmed. But the logic is strong enough for …
Many Complex Organic Compounds –Evolved Building Blocks of Life — Are Formed Where Stars Are Being Born
Recent reports about the detection of carbon-based organic molecules on Mars by the instruments of the Perseverance rover included suggestions that some of the organics may well have fallen from space over the eons, and were then preserved on the Martian surface. Given the cruciality of organics as building blocks of life --or even as …
The Cosmos, As Viewed By The James Webb Space Telescope
The James Webb Space Telescope was developed to allow us to see the cosmos in a new way -- with much greater precision, using infrared wavelengths to piece through dust around galaxies, stars and planets, and to look further back into time and space. In the less than four months since the first Webb images …
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How Planetary Orbits, in Our Solar System and Beyond, Can Affect Habitability
As scientists work to understand what might make a distant planet habitable, one factor that is getting attention is the shape of the planet's orbit, how "eccentric" it might be. It might seem that a perfect circular orbit would be ideal for habitability because it would provide stability, but a new model suggests that it …
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The Virtual Planetary Lab and Its Search for What Makes an Exoplanet Habitable, or Even Inhabited
For more than two decades now, the Virtual Planetary Laboratory (VPL) at the University of Washington in Seattle has been at the forefront of the crucial and ever-challenging effort to model how scientists can determine whether a particular exoplanet is capable of supporting life or perhaps even had life on it already. To do this, …
The James Webb Space Telescope Begins Looking at Exoplanets
The James Webb Space Telescope has begun the part of its mission to study the atmospheres of 70 exoplanets in ways, and at a depth, well beyond anything done so far. The telescope is not likely to answer questions like whether there is life on distant planet -- its infrared wavelengths will tell us …
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The World’s Most Capable Space Telescope Readies To Observe. What Will Exoplanet Scientists Be Looking For?
The decades-long process of developing, refining, testing, launching, unfurling and now aligning and calibrating the most capable space telescope in history is nearing fruition. While NASA has already released a number of "first light" images of photons of light moving through the James Webb Space Telescope's optical system, the jaw-dropping "first light" that has all …
The James Webb Space Telescope And Its Exoplanet Mission (Part 1)
The last time Many Worlds wrote about the James Webb Space Telescope, it was in the process of going through a high-stakes, super-complicated unfurling. About 50 autonomous deployments needed to occur after launch to set up the huge system, with 344 potential single point failures to overcome--individual steps that had to work for …
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More On The Very Hot Science of Stellar Flares and Their Implications For Habitability
Among the many scientific fields born, or reborn, by the rise of astrobiology and its search for life beyond Earth is the study of stars, including our own Sun. Now that we know that planets -- from the large and gaseous to the small and rocky -- are common in our galaxy and number in …
The Amazing Unfurling Of The James Webb Space Telescope
Over the next three weeks-plus, the James Webb Space Telescope will play out an unfurling and deployment in deep space unlike anything this world has seen before. It took decades to perfect the observatory -- a segmented telescope on a heat shield the length of a tennis court that was squeezed for launch into a …
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