Research trio suggests exomoon atmospheres could cause false-positive signs of life on exoplanets
Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - 09:01
in Astronomy & Space
(Phys.org) —A trio of space scientists has published a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in which they suggest that current assumptions regarding using spectral signatures as a means to identify exoplanets that may harbor life, has a major flaw—a false positive could occur if the planet has a moon with an atmosphere that contaminates the spectrum. In their paper, Hanno Rein, Yuka Fujii and David Spiegel of the University of Toronto, the Tokyo Institute of Technology and MIT respectively, point out a major problem with using spectral signatures as a means for finding out if life exists on other planets—moons which can cause the false impression of chemical disequilibrium.