The James Webb space telescope has detected, for the first time, the presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, a planet outside the solar system that includes Earth, a discovery that demonstrates its enormous capabilities and excites scientists to follow up on the additional data that it will provide in this regard.
Although the discovered planet is a hot and gaseous giant on which it is impossible for life to exist as we know it, this discovery shows the possibility of conducting observations of rocky planets, with the ultimate aim of finding out whether any of them have favorable conditions for the emergence of life forms.
Pierre-Olivier Lagage, an astrophysicist at the French Atomic Energy Authority, said that this discovery “opens the door for future studies of super-Earth-like planets.”
As for the professor of astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Natalie Battaglia, considered on Twitter, the discovery is amazing, and wrote: “We really have a chance to discover the atmosphere of planets the size of Earth.”
And the US space agency (NASA) explained that the monitoring of carbon dioxide will also allow us to learn more regarding the composition of this planet called WASP-39 b, which was discovered in 2011. This planet is located 700 light years away, and represents regarding a quarter of the mass of Jupiter, which is very close to the sun.
This planet was chosen because several criteria facilitate its observation, while scientists are still evaluating the capabilities of the telescope, which revealed its first images less than two months ago.
WASP-39 b passes very regularly in front of its sun (it goes around it in four days), and its atmosphere is stretched.
The James Webb Telescope was able to provide data on the planet by capturing the tiny contrast in brightness caused by its passage in front of its star.
The telescope then performed analyzes of “filtered” light through the planet’s atmosphere, as various molecules in the atmosphere leave specific signatures that enable their composition to be determined.
The Hubble and Spitzer telescopes had previously monitored the presence of water vapor, sodium and potassium in the atmosphere of this planet, but James Webb was able to go deeper thanks to his large infrared ability.
The NASA statement quoted Zafer Rustamkulov of Johns Hopkins University as saying that “observing the presence of carbon dioxide is tantamount to “crossing a threshold in exoplanet science.”