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The climate crisis presents a huge challenge to all people on Earth. It has led many scientists to look for exo-planets, planets outside our solar system that humans could potentially settle. The James Webb Space Telescope was developed as part of this search to provide detailed observational data about earth-like exo-planets in the coming years. A new project, led by Dr. Assaf Hochman at the Fredy & Nadine Herrmann Institute of Earth Sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU), in collaboration with Dr. Paolo De Luca at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center and Dr. Thaddeus D. Komacek at the University...

Graphic on the different types of "exoplanets" which the new James Webb telescope will be investigating to determine the composition of their atmospheres and the presence of water. The first stunning images from the James Webb Space Telescope were revealed this week, but its journey of cosmic discovery has only just begun. Here is a look at two early projects that will take advantage of the orbiting observatory's powerful instruments. The first stars and galaxiesOne of the great promises of the telescope is its ability to study the earliest phase of cosmic history, shortly after the Big Bang 13.8...

Habitable Planets With Earth-Like Biospheres May Be Much Rarer Than Thought TOPICS:AstrobiologyAstronomyAstrophysicsExoplanetRoyal Astronomical SocietyBy Royal Astronomical Society June 26, 2021A new analysis of known exoplanets has revealed that Earth-like conditions on potentially habitable planets may be much rarer than previously thought. The work focuses on the conditions required for oxygen-based photosynthesis to develop on a planet, which would enable complex biospheres of the type found on Earth. The study was recently published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.The number of confirmed planets in our own Milky Way galaxy now numbers into the thousands. However, planets that are...

Earth will be able to host life for just another 1.75 billion years or so, according to a study published on 18 September in Astrobiology1. The method used to make the calculation can also identify planets outside the Solar System with long ‘habitable periods’, which might be the best places to look for life. The habitable zone around a star is the area in which an orbiting planet can support liquid water, the perfect solvent for the chemical reactions at the heart of life. Too far from a star and a planet’s water turns to permanent ice and its carbon...

Alan Boss, whose new book The Crowded Universe will soon be on my shelves (and reviewed here), has driven the extrasolar planet story to the top of the news with a single statement. Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting in Chicago, Boss (Carnegie Institution, Washington) said that the number of Earth-like planets in the universe might be the same as the number of stars, a figure he pegged at one hundred billion trillion. A universe teeming with life? Inevitably. The Telegraph quoted Boss on the matter in an early report on his presentation: “If...

If there is life on other planets, an Australian team of astronomers has just found the region in our Milky Way galaxy where it is most likely to exist.. Unfortunately, technology does not yet exist to get man within reach of his nearest possible neighbours. According to Charles Lineweaver, writing in Science, there are four ingredients needed to create complex life: the presence of a host star (such as the Sun), enough heavy elements (carbon, oxygen and nitrogen) to form a planet, sufficient time for biological evolution (at least four billion years in the case of Earth) and the absence...