Spectroscopy: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life Essay

Kepler -452b is believed to be a rocky planet and is said to be made up of a mix of silicon, carbon, magnesium and iron (elements found throughout Earth and other rocky planets) with active volcanoes, can keep water and oceans and an atmosphere that can hold gases. Simulations can prove that Kepler -452b is habitable as CO2 concentrations in its atmosphere are comparable and slightly lower than in Earth present day. With the help of models and research, we can assume that the planet is very likely to have a dense atmosphere due to it’s size and is too likely to carry liquid water. In addition, the sky is most probably blue similar that of to earth and if there were to be molecular oxygen in the atmosphere - produced by photosynthesis -, it could suggest native plant growth and can also host and allow Earth’s plants to photosynthesize due to the similarity of suns. Therefore, not only can learn to grow the local flora, but bring Earths to sustain ad create a greenhouse and/or gardens.

What makes LH 1140 b’s transit unique is that each orbit has the planet passing across its sun, much like an eclipse from our point of view. This fortunate positioning reveals much about the planet, such as the composition of the atmosphere by observing light refracting through the molecules present in it. The molecules absorb the light, and form a halo around the planet that displays

This experiment was conducted to study and investigate if extraterrestrial life exists upon the exoplanet TRES 2. It was hypnotized that TRES 2 did not sustain the qualifications to support extraterrestrial existence. The results from this testing conclude the hypothesis was correct, with research as an addition from the luminosity testing it has been knowledge that TRES 2 reflects less than 1% of light making it one of the darkest exoplanets currently discovered. Light is a crucial element in the building blocks of life, it is the most important factor that influence the way life evolved on Earth. From photosynthesis, which is responsible for making producing nutrients in plantae’s and meeting our energy requirements. Furthermore TRES 2 orbits

Exoplanets are interesting to us for a number of reasons. By locating and observing them, we are able to gather a variety of useful data that tells us details about the planet, and then compare and contrast them to other exoplanets, as well as our own planet Earth. These comparisons are our attempt at better understanding the formation history of rocky planets such as the one we live on today, and furthermore understand the future of rocky planets based on their internal composition and proximity to their host stars.

"NASA's Kepler mission has doubled the number of known planets outside of our solar system. In what can only be described as a "bonanza", 715 new planets have been reported thanks to the Kepler space telescope's planet-hunting mission. Using a new method for verifying potential planets led to the volume of new discoveries from Kepler, which aims to help humans search for other worlds that may be like Earth."

Furthermore, scientists have this big prediction in which they think that in about ten years they will prove themselves right. Technology develops more and more each day and in about ten years scientist might have advanced tools to travel through space and discover more. In some planets that scientists have discovered, they had found a gas giant. “A gas giant is a planet that is mainly composed of Helium and Hydrogen.” An example of a planet that has gas giants would be Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. If a gas giant is found in a planet, the gas giant can give many characteristics to the planet. A planet that contains a gas giant could be big and cold, sometimes the characteristic of the planet gives scientist a big clue that there is no life in that planet. For example, if the weather is to cold in that planet or if there is

Searching for extrasolar planets using Doppler detection consists of measuring periodic radial velocity variations of a star that are produced from orbiting planets. The spectrographs are sensitive enough to pick up other details about the planets around the star based on their orbital period length. Based on the estimated distance from the star, it can be determined if it is in the habitable zone for liquid water to be present. It cannot be concluded from this information that the planet is habitable and the researchers need to know more physical properties of the planet to determine this.

Exoplanet classification is facilitated by the fact that a distinction in mass between planets and smaller bodies is not yet relevant. In contrast, nomenclature is complicated by the problems of distinguishing planets from brown dwarfs. The IAU 2003 recommendation, by the working group on extrasolar planets (IAU, 2003) is:

Exoplanets exist in a vast array of sizes, in numerous systems, across countless galaxies. This begs the question: is life realistically, even mathematically possible elsewhere? The only answer we have right now is: that we don’t know for certain. The only baseline for life

The field of exoplanets is transitioning from an age of discovery into an era of planetary characterization. In the last decade, the Kepler spacecraft revealed that planets are ubiquitous within the galaxy, and over the coming years, TESS will find hundreds of nearby terrestrial planets. A primary NASA goal in astrophysics from the Science Mission Directorate is to “search for life on planets around other stars.” To achieve this, the properties of transiting candidate planets must be well understood to assess potential habitability. In particular, the planetary radii derived from the light curves of wide-field surveys are significantly underestimated. For Kepler, by a factor of 1.5 on average (Ciardi et al. 2015). High-resolution imaging

Scientist know that planets that are closer to the sun are more rocky and the planets that are farther away are mostly made of gas so they know that the planets closer to the sun are more likely to have life on them (Notes). Knowing the solar nebula theory scientists will have a better understanding of how other solar systems formed so they could compare the gravity of the suns of other solar systems to the gravity of our own. (solar nebula theory notes and Objects in orbit)

Known as Kepler 452b , the new planet is the smallest exoplanet yet discovered within this necessary habitable zone of a G2 star, which is our own Sun’s classification. The new planet is about 6 billion years old, has a diameter sixty percent that of the Earth, and is located in the constellation Cygnus, roughly 1,400 light-years away from us.

All research, authored by Professor Rory Barnes is published in the latest issue of Astrophysical Journal, and the data names the new metric “the habitability index for transiting planets’. Barnes, professor of astronomy and the University of Washington, declares that he and his team have conceived a way of taking all observational data available to develop a system that would help astronomers decide which planets, of the hundreds suspected of life sustainability, is actually worth the attention.

The Kepler Telescope in its quest to find other planets like Earth made a breakthrough discovery on July 2015. NASA scientists announced the discovery of Kepler-452b. An exoplanet, a planet outside our solar system that orbits a far off star, named after the star it orbits which is called Kepler-452. Kepler-425b has numerous similarities with Earth that is why scientists are now eager to determine if it is hosted or has hosted life. It orbits a single star and is located at the so called habitable zone, a sweet spot where a planet could potentially harbor water because it receives the right amount of sunlight, much like the Earth (orwig & kiersz, 2015). Dubbed as the “bigger, older cousin of Earth” (NASA, 2015), the announcement has been met with a lot of excitement. But with excitement, comes ambiguity.

Using methods such as those stated above, scientists have been able to discover hundreds of exoplanets and the first detection was in 1995. Once they detect one, they begin evaluating it to ascertain whether it can support life. Further, they analyze the light spectrum that radiates from the star in order to reveal the properties of the planet. The hunt is still on for planets, which are about the size of earth and those that are