From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Tue Oct 09 2007 - 11:22:33 PDT
Detecting Life-bearing Extra-solar Planets with Space Telescopes
Authors: Steven V. W. Beckwith
(Submitted on 7 Oct 2007)
Abstract: One of the promising methods to search for life on extra-solar
planets (exoplanets) is to detect life’s signatures in their atmospheres.
Spectra of exoplanet atmospheres at the modest resolution needed to search
for oxygen, carbon dioxide, water, and methane will demand large collecting
areas and large diameters to capture and isolate the light from planets in
the habitable zones around the stars. For telescopes using coronagraphs to
isolate the light from the planet, each doubling of telescope diameter will
increase the available sample of stars by an order of magnitude, indicating
a high scientific return if the technical difficulties of constructing very
large space telescopes can be overcome. For telescopes detecting atmospheric
signatures of transiting planets, the sample size increases only linearly
with diameter, and the available samples are probably too small to guarantee
detection of life-bearing planets. Using samples of nearby stars suitable
for exoplanet searches, this paper shows that the demands of searching for
life with either technique will require large telescopes, with diameters of
order 10m or larger in space.
Comments: 15 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Ap. J
Subjects: Astrophysics (astro-ph)
Cite as: arXiv:0710.1444v1 [astro-ph]
Submission history
From: Steven V. W. Beckwith [view email]
[v1] Sun, 7 Oct 2007 21:34:58 GMT (122kb,D)
http://arxiv.org/abs/0710.1444
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