The James Webb Space Telescope has detected for the first time the presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet outside the solar system that includes Earth, a discovery that shows its enormous capabilities.
Scientists reported that the discovered planet is a hot and gaseous giant and it is impossible for life to exist on it, but the discovery shows the possibility of conducting observations of rocky planets and finding out if any of them have favorable conditions for life.
Catch your breath — Webb has captured the first clear evidence of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere of a planet outside of our solar system! WASP-39 B is a gas giant closely orbiting a Sun-like star 700 light years away: https://t.co/FenLqV6HSo pic.twitter.com/abJvqxfLdG
— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) August 25, 2022
Pierre-Olivier Lagag, an astrophysicist at the French Atomic Energy Authority, said in a statement to AFP on Thursday that the discovery “opens the door to conducting future studies on Earth-like planets.”
Natalie Battaglia, professor of astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, tweeted that the discovery was amazing, and wrote, “We really have a chance to discover the atmospheres of planets the size of Earth.”
And the US space agency (NASA) explained that monitoring carbon dioxide will also allow us to learn more about the composition of this planet called (WASP-39 b), which was discovered in 2011, located 700 light years away, and representing about a quarter of the mass of Jupiter, which is very close to the sun.
Our JWST Transiting Exoplanet Early Release Science Team is proud to report on the detection of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere of the exoplanet WASP-39b. Press release and a thread ???? …
https://t.co/XpAxZMg4PG pic.twitter.com/nFCMT3jVBZ— Natalie Batalha (@nbatalha) August 25, 2022
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 the Sun (it orbits around it in four days), its atmosphere is stretched, and the telescope provided data on the planet by capturing the tiny contrast in luminosity caused by it passing in front of its star.
The telescope performed analyzes of “filtered” light through the planet’s atmosphere, as the 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 great infrared ability.
The NASA statement quoted Zafer Rustamkulov of Johns Hopkins University as saying that detecting carbon dioxide is “crossing a threshold in exoplanet science.”