Carbon Dioxide Found on Exoplanet

By Isabelle Parker

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has discovered evidence of CO2 in the atmosphere of a planet outside Earth's solar system. The detection could put researchers closer to finding life on other planets, as understanding the composition of a planet's atmosphere is essential to learning how the planet originated and evolved. "Carbon dioxide molecules are sensitive tracers of the story of planet formation", researcher Mike Line says. The find was on gas giant WASP-39 b, a planet on which water vapour, sodium and potassium have been found previously by other telescopes, such as the Hubble Space Telescope. Its diameter is 1.3 times larger than Jupiter, and it has a high temperature of 900 degrees Celsius. It is a close orbiting body, as it is only 700 light years away from its star, and completes an orbit in around 4 Earth days. The finding provides proof that the James Webb Space Telescope may be able to detect and measure carbon dioxide in other planets, which could help researchers find signs of life in the universe.