What Planets Outside Our Solar System Can Tell Us About Life on Earth
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Almost eight hundred million miles away from earth, the moon and soldiers orbits the gas giant planet sam. And so this is tiny, only three hundred fourteen miles in diameter, that's small enough to fit entirely inside the borders of texas. Back in june, and international group of scientists announced they found evidence that suggests, and salt s has all the necessary building blocks for life, meaning this small icy moon could be habitable.

That has a global subsurface ocean that salty, that's underneath this icy shell.

That's wall street journal, science reporter, island woodward .

and past evidence from missions from nason other international space agencies have found five key ingredients of typical earth life, but they hadn't found the sixteen ingredient. Foster us. And Foster is is sort of a very rare element. And with that last checkbox, IT basically indicates that and salad is potentially habitable and A A really great place in our planetary labor's od to look for life island says this recent .

finding is evidence that life could be more common in our solar system than we once thought, and also perhaps on EXO planets. Those are planets found outside our solar system. In the thirty one years since the first exoplanets were discovered, astronomers have found more than fifty five hundred. They're still finding new ones and new technologies, helping scientists learn even .

more about them. If ocean worlds in our planet ary neighbor od do seem to have conditions that are typical of earth life, it's plausible that there are similar conditions on other ocean worlds outside of our solar system, on these extra solar planets or exoplanets that we should also be looking for.

Take the EXO planet k two eighteen b it's one hundred and twenty four light years away from earth and was first discovered in two thousand fifteen. Earlier this month, NASA announced that the jim's web space telescope spotted signs of carbon dioxide and mEthane there, which suggests that might be an ocean world, and an ocean world with all the elements for life could be habitable. But habitable for some life forms doesn't necessarily mean that humans could survive there.

There's plenty of places on earth where microbes are totally happy and we would die immediately.

Chris imp is an astronomer at the university of arizona and author of the book worlds without end, exoplanets, habitability and the future of humanity. He says, what we consider habitable for life, you're on earth, might not be the same for other planets in our solar system, or even in the rest of the galaxy. And I can have major implications for what our understanding of life is.

The uncomfortable fact of this field is that life might be so strange that it's unrecognizable. And then you'd, how do you define an experiment to detect IT or find .

IT from the wall street journal? This is the future of everything. I'm Daniel lis. I spoke with Christophe about how astronomers are hunting for exoplanets and how new technology is giving them a Better glimpse of far off worlds, which could change how we search for life in our own solar system and elsewhere in the universe. Stay with us.

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Chris mpe, welcome to the future of everything.

please, to be with you.

People have been imagining other words and what they might be like for thousands of years, but we only started finding proof planets outside our solar system, called EXO planets, in the early one thousand nine hundred nineties. Why are they so hard to find?

Well, planets don't emit their own light. They reflect a little bit of the light of their star. So you trying to detect something that hundreds of millions or billions of times fainter than its parent star. And it's like looking for a firefly that's right there in the stadium flood lights.

It's been more than thirty years since the first exoplanets were discovered. Detecting what an EXO planet's atmosphere made of is another thing it's really hard to do, and it's only been done for about one hundred exoplanets. Why is IT so important to get this data?

Well, we're trying to answer an incredibly profound question about the universe, which is, is there life beyond earth? Is the sequence of events that LED to us, or biog started about four billion years ago? Is that unique to this rock around this star, in this part of the milky way? Everything else about the history of astronomy would suggest we're not special, but we still don't know the answer.

And that S A big one. The traditional astronomical definition of a habitable planet is one that's in the so called golda x zone. That means the planet surface temperatures is one where water is able to exist in liquid form, is not too hot. It's not too cold. But is that too restrict of, especially since life is found in some pretty extreme envionmental here on earth?

So the lesson of the earth is that life does not need a star. We have life on earth that exists deeper in the oceans. That's not part of a photosynthetic food chain.

We have life inside deep rock. We have life that can handle higher than boiling point of water, lower than the freezing point of water. So the bounds on life on earth, the pretty, pretty wide.

We've got europe, the icon and watery moon of jupiter that's very far out. We have in celeus, a little moon of satan. This even further out that has ice gets and subsurface liquid or water we have tighten, which is a bizarre moon of satan that might have a different form of life. They stand and thing rather than water. So the solar system has examples where there could be biology.

How would you define a habitable planet?

I don't even know that I can do IT very well, because what kinds stuck doing the most obvious thing, which is we look for the thing we know. We look for life as we know on this planet, when that may not be the full spectrum of what you might call biology and the universe.

We look for life that uses liquid water medium, when that may not absolutely be true everywhere as so we just make these assumptions, and you started to do the experiment you can do because you have to know how to recognize its. The uncomfortable fact of this field is that life might be so strange that it's unrecognizable. And then you, how do you to find an experiment to detect IT or find IT?

All right. So just in our own solar system, we've got gas giants like saturn and jupiter. Venus is kind of like earth if IT was weighted and had a carbon dioxide atmosphere.

Plus there are several moons that scientists think could be habitable, scattered throughout the solar system. And that's a lot of variety, just for our own neighborhood, so to speak. What are astronomers learning about what kinds of EXO planets are out there so far?

Some of the things were learning suggest that our solar system may not be typical. The most common type of excell planet is actually a super earth, or we don't have a super earth in our solar system. So the most common types of exoplanet in the galaxy doesn't exist in our solar system. And that leaves us scratching our heads and wondering, you know.

are we difficult? What is a super earth?

It's roughly two to three times are size and sixty eight times earth mass. And so it's it's a health dear version of the earth, and it'll have a party, a thick atmosphere. It'll almost certainly have active joy. They probably perhaps ital so their great interest, they're actually a little easier to study earth themselves.

There aren't tending missions planned to go to exoplanets, but space agencies are planning several missions to moons in the outer regions of our solar system. One of these, the european space agencies, jupiter icy moons explore or juice mission, launched in April and should reach the planet in twenty thirty one. What does this have to do with habitable exoplanets, or exos?

Well, the juice mission is going inspect as several moons of jupiter, but the probably the most exciting one to most people. a. It's not going to like, land on the surface or drill through the ice IT drops.

b. And then sniff the gas or ice that splashes often looks for organic material and possibly life because the other solar system doesn't get a lot of attention. IT takes a decade to plan a mission, a decade for you to get out there.

They're all expensive, multibillion dollar sion. So we just don't go there very often. So this is a valuable one.

Let's puts the numbers on IT. The juice mission is gonna cost about one point seven billion dollars by the time it's complete. And another mission that masses working on the europa clipper mission, which is just going to study one of jupiter moons, europa, is scheduled to launch in twenty twenty four, and that will probably cost at least five billion dollars. Once everything's all said and done. What do you say to people who wonder why we should spend so much money on missions like this?

You have to put IT in the scheme of things when the public is also what fraction of their tax dollar goes to NASA. They always over estimate. You know, they say all it's a dime or nickle of my text.

Dollar was not. It's like a few tens of a cent and only a fraction of that goes to plant three science. And the things we're talking about, it's really a very small amount of what we spent, especially on military things.

For context, in the twenty twenty three fiscal year, the U. S. Department of defense budget was more than eight hundred sixteen billion dollars. NASA was given twenty five point four billion dollars, is a lot smaller, but it's still a lot of money. So when we're talking about missions than to jupiter and its moons, what would we have to learn to make these missions worth .

IT know we sort of want to answer the question the most direct way and say yes, there's microbes or D N A and is either exactly like our formal life are different either way that's interesting um but really we're just iterating towards that answer. These missions are not profound enough. You you just can't send a full biology lab to the outer solar system. So you have to put a compact package together and learn as much as you can, and sort of just see if the ingredients for life are there.

And so what might we learn from studying some of these moons around jupiter that you could be applied to the search for EXO moons outsider solar system play?

Scientists think there probably dozen habitable locations in the solar system, which includes the objects we talked about, but also some of the moons of your ness and aptn e further out that we don't know much about, maybe even plughole itself. These are places where there liquid water, of course, on the surface, but under the pressure of ice and rock and heated by the rocks from the interior, you can have liquid water.

You've got organic material, the local energy source. That's all you need for life. So if you have a dozen habitable spots in one solar system, but only one habitable planet earth, then that's an order of magnus de more places where there could be life in the universe.

Just ahead. How new technology is helping astronomers take a close look at distant exoplanets, including next generation telescopes that can help block out the light of faraway stars. Stay with us.

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Are IT. So in recent years, especially now that scientists are starting to get data back from the gene's web space telescope, it's been a lot more evidence that exoplanets are more common than once thought. What does that mean for our understanding of the universe if there are just so many more planes out there?

Well, IT IT says that the process where a star forms and the spinning this collapses and there's debris left over that gradually increase into plane is that's a standard process in astrophysics. We would be surprised if the warrant planets around other stars. And the question is, what are the demographics of those EXO planets? And since we are rather obsessive about the question of biology, we kind of home in on the earth, like planets or the super earth.

Most of the detection techniques used to identify EXO planets were indirect. So what are some of the technologies that astronomers are working on to make IT easier to find these exoplanets in the future?

The technologies that we now need are the technologies that will perfectly extinguished, ed, that very bright star, and leave behind the feebly reflected light of the planet. And then when you can do that, you can swear that light into a spectrum and look at the atmosphere. And what is made of most of that will be done by the huge telescopes that are all under construction.

They're all twenty to thirty to forty meter telescopes, and they are built to do that experiment. And then, baby, by next generation of space telescopes, you have to design and build your optics really well within the telescope to a cult, the central star and blood IT out. And then you can extract the little signal from the reflective vide of the star.

What does that mean for us here on earth .

is an interesting dickon's y either life on earth was a unique accident and we're alone in the universe or we're not um so we're really just trying to look for other forms of life beyond earth. And we're looking for the most simple forms of life, microbes, bacteria. And the only way we really have a handle on simple forms of life is when they're pervasive enough to alter a planet's atmosphere completely.

And that happened on the earth because the oxygen we breath was produced by micro billions of years ago. And there is one part in five of our air that's a pretty dramatic imprint on an atmosphere. And so we'll do the same kind of experiment with. So planets will look for ox yen, will look for ozone, look for mEthane, will look for water paper, of course, because we want to know that there's water. Since life on earth all depends on water.

what are the chances that will find other forms of life on exoplanets or EXO moons? Well.

I would say it's at a very interesting stage. We've already found planet that is close to earth as we're likely define. And so this experiment, expecting the atmosphere and looking for alteration due to biology, that's a game that probably will succeed or fail in the next five to seven years.

It's not going to be a clean Christians or because these spectra going to be kind of rat, kind of noisy a little lambi you is to interpret you're not gonna the smoking gun of life. It's not gonna that simple. One example probably won't convince you because there's always uncertainty. And so you probably want six or eight or ten.

And when you get up to that number, if you find nothing on any of them, and they were all very habitable as far as you know, that life on earth survive these environments, then you're going to a start to think, well, maybe what happened? Earth was kind of unique or a flu or special. And if we find many or several from that first sample, then game on. We have a whole new field of science, and then you're really excited.

And then the question you want to ask is, are they the same as life on earth, or some different variation on that? Does natural selection as articulated by Darwin? Does that Operate on these other words? Do they use the same replicating molecule, D N A, N R N A? Do they organize themselves and selves the same way? Are biological life forms? Do we have all these questions? And of course, if you have my robie life in a lot of places, then why would you have intelligent technological life? So with the sheer abundance of habitable worlds, that makes IT incredibly unlikely that we're alone.

But microbes, you know, front page headline, the general public will probably excited for a week, and then it'll fade into the new cycle. Scientists, scientists, to be excited for a long time. That will change everything. It'll change biology, it'll change a astronomy. But IT still bag that second question, if you've got microbes and you know that on earth that eventually LED to us, how often do you get something like us and if .

it's like that you know doesn't look anything like us, I mean, um how would we even recognize that know as life?

I think that's the exactly the right question, and it's an unfortunate question because you you know you you look for the things you can detect. So it's quite possible that alien and forms of biology will be inscrutable ble unrecognizable, so different that we're not designing the right experiment to even look for them. Um that's even been true of mars people have argued going back to the the pioneer, going back to the first mars missions uh that those early life detection experiments only look for tourist al metabolic mechanisms and if IT have been some slightly bizarre mechanism that wouldn't found life and so the experiment was the no result of the experiment was not meaningful.

So aside from whether or not life is evolved elsewhere in the universe, what else can we learn from studying exoplanets?

Well, planets change over a cosmic time. And so there are natural forces that changed the atmosphere in the interior of a planet. And so EXO planets are all little object lection in how planets like hours of valve. And so I think we will learn a lot about this sort of evolution of habitable worlds independent of what the human footprint on a habitable world is. And that's gonna help for.

So I think it's safe to say that i'm never going to be able to visit an EXO plan at my lifetime, and chances are probably neither with my kids or my grandkids, right? It's really cold to know that there are these other planets out there in universe, but do these discoveries really change anything for us here on earth?

I think they will only change something. If we find intelligent and technological life elsewhere, that could change something because then you are communicating through light and you're not imagining that you would travel there because the distances are so large know there are microbes. Es, elsewhere.

That mayor may not inform us about terrestrial biology. I mean, I would do a biologist, but IT may not affect how we live on this planet. If we find intelligent life. Of course, we got a lot of questions to ask university .

of arizona astronomy professor Chris mb. The future of everything is a production of the wall street journal. Stephanie organ, fitz is the editorial director, or of the future of everything.

This episode was produced by me. Dani Lewis, our fact checker, is a partners, Nathan Michael level and Jessica enton, our sound designers, and vote the theme music. Katherine mills up is our supervising producer.

I shall all muslim is our development producer. Scott sl. Away and Christianly are the deputy editors, and philonous patterson is the head of news audio for the wall street journal. Like the show, tell your friends and leave us a five star review on your favorite platform. Thanks for listening.

Amazon q business is the new generative A I assistant from A W S, because many tasks can make business slow, as if waiting through mud help. Luckily, there's a faster, easier, less messy choice. Amazon q can security understand your business data and use that knowledge to streamline task? Now you can summarize quarterly results or do complex analysis in no time.

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