🔭 New space telescope could potentially see city lights on exoplanets

• NASA's new space telescope will search for habitable exoplanets.
• The telescope will be able to detect both biological and technological signs of life.
• It may also potentially search for city lights on the night side of habitable exoplanets.

Searching for life in space

NASA's future mission "The Habitable Worlds Observatory" has been recommended for funding. The space telescope will identify and directly image potentially habitable exoplanets. It will be the first telescope specifically designed to search for life on exoplanets.

The telescope will use spectroscopy to search for molecular fingerprints of primitive life, such as molecular oxygen or methane, which constitute biosignatures.

Detecting artificial light

An unexpected use for the Habitable Worlds Observatory is that it may potentially search for city lights on the night side of habitable exoplanets. According to a study by researcher Elisa Tabor, the telescope will not only be sensitive enough to detect artificial night side illumination comparable to the starlight illumination of the planet's day side, but it could also distinguish the type of lamps used by aliens and compare them to our own LED lamps, explains Professor Avi Loeb.

Detecting artificial light does not require imaging the planet but merely noting that there is extra light from the planet added to the emission from the star.

Proxima Centauri

The best chances to image city lights outside the solar system are around the nearest stars. The closest target is Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf located 4.25 light-years away. This star is nearly six hundred times fainter than the sun, so a planet needs to be a few tens of times closer to the star than the Earth's distance to the sun to support the chemistry of life in liquid water.

Proxima Centauri has a rocky planet with about 1.3 Earth masses at a twentieth of Earth's distance to the sun. Due to its proximity to the star, this planet — Proxima b — is thought to be tidally locked, meaning it shows the same side to the star all the time, just like the moon does to Earth.

Proxima b has a permanent day side and a permanent night side. If Proxima b is already inhabited by a technological civilization, its day side could be covered with photovoltaic cells to generate electricity that would light up and warm the night side, which is otherwise cold and dark. The Habitable Worlds Observatory could potentially detect city lights on the permanent night side of Proxima b.

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