Alien life: a new “clue” has been identified in the search for habitable planets

Scientists believe that worlds with low levels of carbon dioxide may be habitable. This could mean that such distant planets have oceans and an ozone layer – and therefore a new “lead” in the search for alien life in space.

A team from the University of Birmingham and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology believes that distant worlds with low levels of carbon dioxide could mean they are habitable.

According to the Daily Mail, this speculation stems from the idea that lower levels mean oceans and plants are absorbing the chemical.

Scientists believe the James Webb Space Telescope is a prime candidate for searching for low levels, as NASA’s telescope has previously revealed the atmospheric conditions of exoplanets.

Julien de Wit, associate professor of planetary sciences at MIT, said in a statement: “The Holy Grail in exoplanet science is the search for habitable worlds and the presence of life, but all the features discussed so far were not available to the latest observatories. Now “We have a way to find out if there is liquid water on another planet. And that’s something we can achieve in the next few years.”

To date, astronomers have discovered more than 5,200 worlds outside our solar system.

And although the technology for searching for habitable planets has advanced, scientists have yet to uncover the “Holy Grail,” the Daily Mail emphasizes.

Modern techniques look for “glimmers” on planets, which could indicate light reflecting off water, which has helped experts identify lakes on Saturn’s moon Titan.

However, this is not possible with distant planets that have yet to be explored using artificial vehicles.

Martin Turbet, who participated in the study, says: “The idea came to us when we looked at what was happening to the terrestrial planets in our own system.”

The team of researchers said that Venus, Earth and Mars have similarities as they are rocky and have temperate regions. But Earth is the only planet that has liquid water and has significantly less carbon dioxide in its atmosphere.

“We assume that these planets were created in a similar way, and if we now see one planet with much less carbon, it means that it has gone somewhere,” the scientists say. “The only process that could remove this amount of carbon from the atmosphere is , is a strong water cycle that includes oceans of liquid water.”

The team developed a strategy to implement the new method, which first involved searching for groups of terrestrial planets that orbit relatively close to each other – just like our own solar system.

The next step would be to confirm which worlds have atmospheres by looking for carbon dioxide.

“Carbon dioxide is a very strong absorber in the infrared and can be easily detected in exoplanet atmospheres,” explains de Wit. “The carbon dioxide signal can then reveal the presence of exoplanet atmospheres.”

And then the team proposed measuring carbon levels in the atmosphere.

However, the researchers noted that just because a planet has liquid water does not mean it harbors life. This idea led them to identify another feature – does the planet have ozone?

“Researchers note that on Earth, plants and some microbes contribute to the absorption of carbon dioxide, although not to the same extent as the oceans,” the research team said in a press release. “However, as part of this process, life forms release oxygen, which reacts with photons from the sun to become ozone, a molecule much easier to detect than oxygen itself.”

If the exoplanet included a carbon dioxide-depleted zone, it would likely be a habitable world.

“If we see ozone, the chances are pretty high that it’s due to life consuming carbon dioxide,” the scientists say. “If it’s life, it’s great life. It wouldn’t just be a few bacteria. It would be planetary-scale biomass, capable of process enormous amounts of carbon and interact with it.”