The researchers also assessed how the changing seasons impact the spectra.
This study examines Earth’s infrared emission spectrum, the effect of different observation geometries on those spectra, and how the observations would appear to a much more distant observer. A technological civilization elsewhere in the Milky Way would likely do the same thing.
We want to know if anything else lives somewhere out there.Īs technology advances, astronomers are getting more powerful instruments to study distant planets. The bewildering variety of worlds we’ve discovered are interesting in their own right, but if there’s a Holy Grail in exoplanet science, it’s got to be habitability. We’re extending the same type of observations to planets light years away. By measuring UV and infrared, scientists learned a lot about the properties of planetary atmospheres, surfaces, and overall energy balance.īut today, we live in the time of exoplanet science. It was the beginning of a more in-depth characterization of other planets. Pioneer 10 and 11 (Jupiter and Saturn) and Voyager 1 and 2 (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) performed flybys of some of Earth’s siblings. The historical roots of this type of research go back to the 70s when spacecraft were visiting the planets in our Solar System. Mettler is a doctoral student at the ETH Zurich Department of Physics, studying Exoplanets and Habitability. Earth’s Time-Variable Thermal Emission and its Atmospheric Seasonality of Bio-Indicators.” It’s available at the pre-press site, and the lead author is Jean-Noel Mettler. The study is “ Earth as an Exoplanet: II. This distant planet is habitable.” A new study might be part of getting to that point by examining Earth’s outward appearance through different seasons. It’ll take a lot of science and innovative reasoning before we ever get to a point where we can say “Yes. So far, we’ve only got glimpses and hints of exoplanets that might be able to support life. The headlines spread like a virus through the internet with only minor mutations from site to site. Almost nothing in space science generates as much widespread excitement as finding a potentially habitable planet.
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