With the vastness of the universe, it is quite likely that we are not alone, but for the moment, not only have we not received an answer or a visit from other beings, but a habitable exoplanet has not been found, a future destination for when the Earth does not can more.
And for years, scientists had hoped that the TRAPPIST-1 star system, which was originally detected in 1999, would harbor the conditions necessary for life on one of its planets.
In fact, NASA already warned in 2017 that this star system TRAPPIST-1 had the largest number of planets similar to the Landfor which scientists and astronomers around the world had high hopes, until today.
And the first results that come to us from the James Webb Space Telescope on this star system and its planets have thrown to the ground any kind of hope, because the exoplanet known as TRAPPIST-1b, which was the most similar to Earth, does not seem to have an atmosphere. and therefore does not contain life.
So in the case of this planet, the most similar to Earth “shows no signs of an atmosphere”, explain the scientists behind this observation.
These planets had already been ruled out before with the transmission spectroscopy technique using the Hubble or Spitzer space telescopes.
So these early observations already seemed to portend today’s results, since they had detected no atmospheric features on these exoplanets in the TRAPPIST-1 solar system, despite the fact that the four closest planets were in the habitable zone of their solar system.
This is how James Webb used
Specifically, the scientists used the mid-infrared instrument of the James Webb (MIRI) to observe medium to long wavelength radiation emanating from the exoplanet TRAPPIST-1b.
They concluded that it receives four times more radiation than Earth does from the Sun, meaning that the exoplanet’s thermal emissions could be measured and shed light on the exoplanet’s atmosphere.
Unfortunately with the latest research, where precisely these observations are discussed, it shows that the exoplanet TRAPPIST-1b does not have signs of an atmosphere.
The researchers state that this planet has little to no atmosphere that is capable of distributing the radiation from its host star, nor did they observe atmospheric absorption of carbon dioxide.
Still, the researchers say follow-up observations will continue to better understand this solar system, but none of its exoplanets appear to harbor life.