December 17, 2009
Cambridge, MA - In the new blockbuster Avatar, humans visit the habitable - and inhabited - alien moon called Pandora. Life-bearing moons like Pandora or the Star Wars forest moon of Endor are a staple of science fiction. With NASA's Kepler mission showing the potential to detect Earth-sized objects, habitable moons may soon become science fact. If we find them nearby, a new paper by Smithsonian astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger shows that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be able to study their atmospheres and detect key gases like carbon dioxide, oxygen, and water vapor.
"If Pandora existed, we potentially could detect it and study its atmosphere in the next decade," said Lisa Kaltenegger of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).
So far, planet searches have spotted hundreds of Jupiter-sized objects in a range of orbits. Gas giants, while easier to detect, could not serve as homes for life as we know it. However, scientists have speculated whether a rocky moon orbiting a gas giant could be life-friendly, if that planet orbited within the star's habitable zone (the region warm enough for liquid water to exist).
"All of the gas giant planets in our solar system have rocky and icy moons," said Kaltenegger. "That raises the possibility that alien Jupiters will also have moons. Some of those may be Earth-sized and able to hold onto an atmosphere."
Kepler looks for planets that cross in front of their host stars, which creates a mini-eclipse and dims the star by a small but detectable amount. Such a transit lasts only hours and requires exact alignment of star and planet along our line of sight. Kepler will examine thousands of stars to find a few with transiting worlds.
Once they have found an alien Jupiter, astronomers can look for orbiting moons, or exomoons. A moon's gravity would tug on the planet and either speed or slow its transit, depending on whether the moon leads or trails the planet. The resulting transit duration variations would indicate the moon's existence.
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For more information:
Sci-Fi's Coolest Worlds
Avatar's 'Pandora' could be a reality
The Real Science of Avatar's Pandora
Pandora: A look at Polyphemis' Exomoon
Avatar's Pandora moon may actually exist
Avatar: A New World That NASA Is Ignoring
'Avatar': The Real-Life Science Behind the Fantasy
Newly Discovered Exoplanets Point the Way to Avatar's Pandora
Visit this great site: PANDORAPEDIA The Official Guide to Pandora.
3 comments:
the blue gas planet, that Pandora orbit is founded. In Alpha Centauri A. around 4 light years away from us. it take only 4 years to travel there. I hope that Pandora exist, and I will see it on real.
1 light year is 5865696000000 miles. It can take tens of thousands of years to travel with our space ships, and they will run out their gas and food and supplies and everything.
but If we use antimatter it can take faster than you can imagine, it says that it take under 40 years, but we can find something like dark energy, then we can maybe get more faster.
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