Life Outside Our Solar System? Scientists Discover Atmosphere Around Earth-Like Planet
The search for extraterrestrial life scored another major milestone when astronomers detected an atmosphere around a super Earth-like planet.
The researchers made it clear though that this is not yet the detection of life on another planet, Fox News reported.
Nevertheless, "it's an important step in the right direction: the detection of an atmosphere around the super-Earth GJ 1132b marks the first time that an atmosphere has been detected around an Earth-like planet other than Earth itself," said Dr. John Southworth of Keele University in the U.K.
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Southworth and his team of researchers used the ESO/MPG telescope in Chile to capture images of the planet's host star, GJ 1132. They discovered the atmosphere on GJ 1132b when they noticed that the planet's atmosphere absorbed some of the light from its host star as the planet passed in front of it. The study to identify GJ 1132b's atmosphere has been published in the Astronomical Journal.
GJ 1132b is located 39-light-years from Earth. One light year equals 6 trillion miles. That's a lot farther than Earth-like planet Proxima b, which orbits the red dwarf Proxima Centauri, which is about 4-light-years from Earth. That planet was discovered in August last year.
According to the research team the discovery makes planet GJ 1132b "one of the highest priority targets" for further study by space research facilities such as the Hubble Space Telescope, the ESO's Very Large Telescope, as well as the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be launched next year.
Earlier this year, astronomers found 60 new planets orbiting stars close to Earth's solar system, including a rocky "super Earth." They also found evidence of an additional 54 planets, bringing the potential discovery of new worlds to 114.
In November last year, esteemed scientist and theologian Dr. Hugh Ross examined the scientific evidence of life in other planets.
In a CP interview, Ross, the author of "Improbable Planet: How Earth Became Humanity's Home," said the belief among many astronomers that sentient physical life must be abundant in the universe arises from four false assumptions: the water habitable zone is the only determinate for the habitability of a planet; every star is a candidate for possibly possessing a life habitable planet; the origin of life is a naturalistically easy step; and natural process evolution from a simple single-celled organism into the equivalent of human beings is inevitable given the passage of several billion years.
He said all four assumptions cannot possibly be true. "For example, for a planet to be truly habitable it must simultaneously reside in all nine known habitable zones (liquid water, ultraviolet, photosynthetic, ozone, rotation rate, obliquity, tidal, astrosphere, and atmospheric electric field). Of the 3,547 planets discovered so far, only one resides in all nine known habitable zones — Earth," Ross pointed out.
