“Ultimately, I want to understand the conditions that make a rock into a living world.” — UCSC astronomer Natalie Batalha.
The 18 hexagonal mirrors of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope float nearly one million miles from Earth like golden eyes peering into the universe, searching for signs of life on alien planets.
The astronomers are looking for biosignatures, or signs of life. They could be molecules such as oxygen or carbon dioxide in the atmosphere or other evidence that we can’t yet see. “The cosmos is chockablock with planets,” said Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the Mountain View-based SETI Institute, a pioneering nonprofit organization that has been searching for alien life for decades. “While most of these worlds are undoubtedly disappointing, like Uranus or Neptune, some of them should bear a bit of resemblance to our own planet. This has become a big impetus for those who hope to find life in space.
Batalha said she modeled the open science approach after strategies used in other fields — notably how vaccine research dramatically advanced during the COVID-19 pandemic. “When you download the image, it’s a mess. It’s full of light, and there’s pixel effects you need to correct. You’re going step by step trying to slowly clean the image and subtract away the star’s light,” Carter said. “At the end, out pops an image of the planet. … It’s a really fulfilling moment.”
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