One small step towards understanding the chemistry of alien atmospheres

Our first family computer didn’t have much processing power. In fact it sometimes felt like the technological equivalent of a boxed monkey with an abacus. So when my brother installed SETI@home (it stands for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) – a program designed to harness home PCs to crunch through radio telescope data – the result was a device incapable of supporting anything but a game of Minesweeper.

Judging by recent developments, however, it turns out my curious and philanthropic sibling needn’t have bothered. Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have developed a new method which could allow us to analyse the make-up of exoplanets in greater detail than ever before. According to results presented at the Royal Astronomical Society National Astronomy Meeting on the 5^th July, the new technique will allow astronomers to ‘efficiently search for water on hundreds of worlds without the need for space-based telescopes’. The implications? Easier to look for planets that may harbour those green many-legged aliens, for a start. Furthermore, having improved the technique for water, the team, headed by Jayne Birkby of Leiden University, may now move on to other atmospheric molecules such as O₂, CO₂ and CH₄.