Astronomers suggest new telescopes could detect biomarker gasses in exoplanet atmospheres
Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - 07:30
in Astronomy & Space
(Phys.org)—Astronomers in the Netherlands write in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, that construction of new ground based telescopes could allow for discerning if small exoplanets have biomarker gasses in their atmospheres, and by extension some form of life existing on them. They propose that using newly developed techniques to separate out possible atmospheric gasses from exoplanets, from the oxygen in our own atmosphere using data from the planned European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), or by building large arrays of cheaper to develop flux collector telescopes, could allow for the detection of such biomarkers from land based telescopes.