Analysis of the murky fog to simulate atmosphere created in the laboratory will be an important step in the search for aliens. As you must know, the space telescope James Webb will study planetary atmospheres in search of signals. But how do you know what kind of atmosphere can support life?
Modeling will help to establish a model of the atmosphere that might exist on distant worlds orbiting stars in other solar systems, says Sarah Hirst, associate Professor of Earth Sciences and planetary systems Johns Hopkins University.
“One of the reasons we started this work, is to understand if a layer of fog these planets are more or less suitable for life,” says Hurst. The work was published in Nature Astronomy.
Search for “fingerprints”
Planetary scientists and astronomers use the telescope to find out what gases are included in the composition of the atmospheres of exoplanets. “Each gas has a unique fingerprint,” says Hurst. “If you measure a large enough spectral range, you will be able to understand how all of these fingerprints are superimposed on each other.”
Modern telescopes, however, do not work with every type of exoplanets, because it does not cope with the foggy atmospheres. Fog consists of solid particles suspended in the gas, changing the way light interacts with the gas. Is plugging the spectral fingerprints complicates the measurement of gas composition.
Scientists have suggested that the primitive layer of fog, similar to the ozone layer that protects the Earth from harmful radiation could escape a life since its inception. It would make sense to search for alien life. Hurst believes that her lab simulation can help acsopenstream to determine what types of atmospheres are likely to be vague.
Exoplanets, as a rule, more of Earth and less than Neptune. Since the planets in our Solar system are detected, our limited knowledge makes them more difficult to study.
With the launch of the Webb telescope in the next year, scientists hope to study the atmospheres of exoplanets in detail. New infrared telescope will be able to look back in time even further than the Hubble, with svetomuzykalny surface 6.25 times more. Revolving around the Sun at a distance of one and a half million kilometers from Earth, the telescope will help researchers to measure the composition of exoplanet atmospheres and even find the building blocks of life, if possible.
“Partly we are trying to help people in choosing a place of study,” says Hurst.
Miniature atmosphere
Using computer models, the team Hurst has gathered together a set of ambient compositions that simulate separtely or a mini-Neptune. Changing the levels of the three dominant gases (carbon dioxide, hydrogen and gaseous water), the four other gases (helium, carbon monoxide, methane and nitrogen) and three sets of temperatures, they collected nine different “planets”.
Then scientists have created the suggested atmosphere by mixing the gases in the chamber and heating them. For three days the heated mixture is flowed through a plasma installation, which initiated the chemical reaction inside the chamber.
“The energy breaks the molecules of gas with which we begin. They react with each other and produce new molecules, sometimes produce a solid particle (forming fog), sometimes not,” says Hurst.
“The fundamental question of this work is: which of these gas mixtures — of these atmospheres will be foggy?”, asked Hurst.
All nine variants, as researchers found, was a little vague. The surprise was that some combinations were given more. The team discovered the muddy particles in the two atmospheres dominated by water.
“For a long time we believed that the chemistry of methane was the only right way to create a fog, but now we know that this is not so,” says Hurst, referring to chemistry, rich in both hydrogen and carbon.
The next step for the group Hurst will be the analysis of different types of fog that defines how the color and size of the particles affects the interaction of particles with light. They also plan to test other compounds, temperature, energy sources and test the connection, produced by the fog.
Simulation of the “fog” will help in finding aliens
Ilya Hel