Astronomers have learned to use the moon as a giant mirror to search for alien life
Experts from NASA and ESA conducted an unusual experiment to test a new criterion of the search for exoplanets. We can’t spend the effort to search and explore all the planets, from other worlds, we are primarily interested in inhabited or habitable. One of the conditions is the presence of the atmosphere with a certain gas composition, so the astronomers decided to learn to look for the symptom.
At this technological stage, the whole information we can obtain from a distant exoplanet, is represented by light. Telescopes catch its changes, scientists analyze the data and interpretiruya. There are many different quality of algorithms for this purpose, but searches of the atmosphere through the study of light coming from the planet itself, has not previously been conducted. Fortunately, we were helped by the presence of the Earth itself and the atmosphere, and the satellite moons, which helped to study the light.
The idea was to capture the past through the Earth’s atmosphere the light which has reached the moon and is reflected into space. There he was caught by the Hubble space telescope, specially deployed for this mission. Scientists are well known to almost all the parameters of the equation: the composition of the earth’s atmosphere, the original settings of the light source, the characteristics of the mirror, and now they get data from the telescope. It remains to collect all the information together to deduce the patterns in the future, in the light of exoplanets to understand, there is a comfortable living atmosphere or not.
As the main search item selected the ozone. First, the ozone is obtained from oxygen, and this is an important criterion for the possibility of life on the planet. Secondly, ozone helps protect the planet from dangerous ultraviolet radiation, which significantly increases the chances of origin of life on it. Now at the disposal of scientists there is the signature of ozone in the Earth’s atmosphere, with which to compare a distant exoplanet.