An artist’s rendering of what terrestrial exoplanet GJ 1132 b may look like. Credit: NASA, ESA, Robert L. Hurt (IPAC)
Researchers from the University of Chicago have demonstrated a novel technique to efficiently determine if faraway rocky exoplanets have an atmosphere.
The research, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, has the potential to help unravel patterns in atmosphere formation.
"When we look at a large enough data set, as we will this year with the James Webb Space Telescope, we are hoping to find trends to help us understand more about atmosphere formation—and what makes planets habitable," said University of Chicago Ph.D. student Qiao Xue.
The technique used by the researchers was to use the difference in temperature between the hottest measured value and the calculated theoretical maximum temperature. Thanks to the ability of atmospheres to disperse heat, researchers theorized that if the hottest actual temperature is lower than its theoretical limit, it can be presumed that it has an atmosphere.
Despite first being proposed in 2019, until now researchers have lacked instrumentation that delivers sufficient precision in temperature measurements of these exoplanets until now. By using the James Webb Space Telescope's infrared measurement ability, exoplanet temperature can be precisely measured as a function of the energy intensity they emit.
The method developed not only allows for atmosphere determination but also provides a more streamlined approach to search for exoplanets that have an atmosphere while reducing false negatives and false positives when compared with traditional methods.
By increasing our understanding of what drives atmosphere formation, future research can streamline the process of ruling out uninhabitable planets in the quest to discover exoplanets that could sustain life.
"This study was exciting because I finally got a chance to work with rocky planets, which are the dream subject of every exoplanet scientist because they have so much potential for life," Xue said. "Now I'm so excited to see what comes next."