This is how we’ll find a second earth

Exoplanet Kepler 452b might be able to sustain life.

Master student looks for alien life

This is how we’ll find a second earth

From now on, scientists will be able to exclude quite a few planets in their search for extraterrestrial life. UG astronomy master student Mark Oosterloo and astronomers at SRON and the Vrije Universiteit found a way of screening for suitable planets.

4 May om 17:13 uur.
Laatst gewijzigd op 6 May 2021
om 12:30 uur.

May 4 at 17:13 PM.
Last modified on May 6, 2021
at 12:30 PM.

Door Christien Boomsma

4 May om 17:13 uur.
Laatst gewijzigd op 6 May 2021
om 12:30 uur.

By Christien Boomsma

May 4 at 17:13 PM.
Last modified on May 6, 2021
at 12:30 PM.

Christien Boomsma

Christien is sinds 2016 achtergrondcoördinator bij UKrant. Ze plant de achtergrondverhalen en begeleidt de auteurs. Bij haar eigen verhalen ligt de focus op wetenschap en academisch leven. Daarnaast schrijft ze veel over onderwerpen als sociale veiligheid en maakt ze graag persoonlijke interviews. In haar vrije tijd schrijft ze jeugdboeken en geeft schrijftrainingen. Meer »

Christien has been background coordinator at UKrant since 2016. She plans background stories and supervises authors. Her own stories focus on science and academic life. She also writes widely on topics such as social safety and enjoys making personal interviews. In her spare time, she writes children’s books and gives writing training courses. More »

Over the past few years, astronomers have found approximately four thousand exoplanets that revolve around stars other than our sun. Every time, people wonder: is this where we’ll finally find alien life? Might we not be alone in the universe?

These planets need to meet a few criteria, though. A ‘second earth’ cannot be too far away from its sun, nor too close, ‘enabling earth-like temperatures that lead to liquid water’, Oosterloo explains. They need a stable surface; gas giants like Jupiter cannot sustain life. They also need a carbon cycle. In a carbon cycle, rock on the surface absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere, which is then recycled through tectonic plates and volcanoes.

‘Carbon cycles stabilise temperatures’, says Oosterloo. ‘This ensured the liveability of earth, when the sun has increased in brightness by 20 percent over the past few billion years.’

Workaround

Which of these four thousand exoplanets meets these requirements? We have no idea. They’re simply too far away for us to know what’s happening on the surface. 

Oosterloo and his supervisors came up with a workaround. ‘We know the mass and radius of these planets’, he explains. ‘By using our knowledge of the carbon cycle here on earth, we can extrapolate what that would look like on planets with a different mass and radius.’ They developed a model that allows them to predict how much CO2 there is in a planet’s atmosphere. 

New telescope

It doesn’t help us much just yet, but that is changing, says Oosterloo. ‘The launch of the James Webb telescope will lead to a wealth of information on what the atmosphere on the exoplanets we know is made of.’ This will enable astronomers to figure out whether these exoplanets have a carbon cycle and whether they might sustain life.

There is currently one good candidate, says Oosterloo, who’s since started his PhD track. Exoplanet Kepler 452b, discovered in 2015. But, he emphasises: ‘We’ll discover many more exoplanets in the future, including around small stars where we currently can’t see any planets.’

Dutch