Proxima b might have an atmosphere capable of supporting water, but researchers won’t know until the most sophisticated telescope ever built gets launched into space in 2018.
Proxima Centauri b, the planet that recently became internet-famous for its potential to host extraterrestrial life, is now the subject of much research and speculation about exactly what conditions the planet would need to present with in order for that potential to be a reality. Two researchers are planning to use the brand new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to test one of the major criteria — whether Proxima b has an atmosphere capable of supporting surface liquid water.
In a paper uploaded to the arXiv repository, Laura Kreidberg and Abraham Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics argue the JWST is the instrument with the “potential to put the first constraints on the possibility of life around the nearest star to the Solar System.” The simulations the pair ran indicate that the telescope will be able to reliably distinguish a planet with bare rock from one with the kind of night-time heat redistribution we’re looking for.
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