A Quanta piece on astrobiologist Lisa Kaltenegger.
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Her overarching quest — the search for alien life — is entering an unprecedented phase. Barring the bolt-from-the-blue arrival of something like an extraterrestrial radio broadcast, most astronomers believe that our best near-term chance of encountering other life in the cosmos is to detect biosignature gases — gases that could only have come from life — floating in exoplanets’ atmospheres. The sort of remote measurement necessary to make that kind of detection has strained the capabilities of even humanity’s most advanced observatories. But with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) now in its first few months of observations, such a discovery has become possible.
Over the next few years, the enormous space telescope will closely scrutinize a handful of rocky worlds that are regarded as most likely to be habitable, probably including the new SPECULOOS-2c. At minimum, JWST’s studies should discern whether these planets have atmospheres; they might also show that some are dripping with liquid water. Most optimistically — if biospheres bloom easily from Earth-like worlds — the telescope may detect odd ratios of, say, carbon dioxide, oxygen and methane on one of these planets. Astronomers may then be sorely tempted to attribute the concoction to the presence of an extraterrestrial ecosystem.
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