Sasha Quanz, an astrophysicist at the federal institute of technology ETH in Zurich, Switzerland, made these observations at a recent opening of the university’s new Center for the Origin and Prevalence of Life. Speaking at a press briefing on September 2, Quanz detailed the technological projects now in the works that may allow researchers to finally answer the question of whether we are alone in universe. “In 1995 my colleague [and Noble Prize laureate] Didier Queloz discovered the first planet outside our solar system,” Quanz said during the briefing. “Today, more than 5,000 exoplanets are known and we are discovering them on a daily basis.” There are many more exoplanets waiting to be discovered since astronomers believe that each of the more than 100 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy has at least one companion planet. This creates a huge number of exoplanets, many of which, Quanz added, are just like that Earth and at the right distance from their host stars to allow conditions for life, such as the presence of liquid water. “What we don’t know is whether these terrestrial planets have atmospheres and what those atmospheres are made of,” Quanz said. “We need to probe the atmospheres of these planets. We need an observational approach that would allow us to take pictures of these planets.” The update came just one day after the release of the James Webb Space Telescope team Webb’s first direct image of an exoplanet orbiting a distant star: the huge gas giant HIP 65426 b, a planet 12 times larger than Zeus orbiting 100 sun-Earth distances from its parent star. The James Webb Space Telescopewhich was not built to study exoplanets but to search for the oldest stars in the universe, has already provided a number of breakthroughs in exoplanet research, such as carbon dioxide detection and water in the atmospheres of several of them. Quanz, however, cautions that Webb, although the most powerful observatory ever sent into space, is not powerful enough to see the much smaller Earth-like planets orbiting closer to their stars at distances where liquid water may be present. “[The HIP 65426] The system is a very special system,” Quanz said. “It is a gas giant planet orbiting very far from the star. That’s what Webb can do when it comes to taking pictures of planets. We won’t be able to reach the minor planets. Webb is not strong enough to do that.” However, new instruments are already being built with the sole purpose of filling this gap in the James Webb Space Telescope’s capabilities. Quanz and his team are leading the development of the mid-infrared ELT imager and spectrograph (METIS), a first-of-its-kind instrument that will be part of Extra large telescope (ELT). It is currently manufactured by European Southern Observatory In Chile, the ELT, once completed toward the end of this decade, will feature a 130-foot (40-meter) wide mirror, making it the world’s largest optical telescope. “The primary goal of the instrument is to take the first picture of a potentially Earth-like terrestrial planet around one of the closest stars,” Quanz said. “But our long-term vision is to do this not just for a few stars but for dozens of stars, and to probe the atmospheres of dozens of terrestrial exoplanets.” Quanz admits that the METIS instrument may not yet be the one to pick up signs of life on a planet outside solar system. A ground-based telescope, such as the ELT, must deal with its interference earth’s atmosphere, which distorts measurements of the chemistry of the atmospheres covering distant worlds. And with Webb not quite ready, it will take a whole new mission to answer the big question. This mission, Quanz said, is already being discussed under the auspices of the European Space Agency (ESA). Called LIFE (for Large Interferometer for Exoplanets), the mission, planned in 2017, is currently in the early study phase and has yet to be officially approved or funded. “[The mission] is being considered as a candidate for a future major mission under ESA’s science programme,” said Quanz. The space telescope will examine a vast amount of promising exoplanets for traces of molecules in the atmospheres of these distant planets that could have been formed by living organisms. The new center at ETH Zurich hopes to lay the groundwork for this future mission, Quanz said, and improve our understanding of the chemistry of life and how it affects planetary atmospheres and environments. “We need to gain a deeper understanding of the plausible building blocks of life, chemical reaction pathways and timescales, and external conditions to help us prioritize target stars and target planets,” Quantz said. “We need to verify to what extent the traces of life are real biomarkers, because maybe there are other processes that could lead to the creation of the gases in these atmospheres.” Quantz added that while ambitious, the 25-year timeline he has set for finding life outside the solar system is not “unrealistic.” “There is no guarantee of success. But we will learn other things along the way,” he said. Follow Tereza Pultarova on Twitter @Tereza Pultarova. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and up Facebook.
