New and Easier Way to Hunt for Habitable Exoplanets in the Universe

There may be a better and easier way to search for habitable planets. Scientists have developed promising new calibration tools, called laser frequency combs, that could allow astronomers to take a major step in discovering and characterizing earthlike planets around other stars.

The new devices generate evenly spaced lines of light, much like the teeth on a comb for styling hair or the tick marks on a ruler-hence the nickname of "optical rulers." The tick marks serve as stable reference points when making precision measurements such as those of the small shifts in starlight caused by planets pulling gravitationally on their parent stars.

With that said, today's commercially available combs have a significant drawback. Because their tick marks are so finely spaced, the light output of these combs must be filtered to produce useful reference lines. This extra step adds complexity to the system and requires costly additional equipment. Now, researchers have looked to a kind of comb not previously used for astronomy.

"We have demonstrated an alternative approach that is simple, reliable, and relatively inexpensive," said Kerry Vahala, one of the researchers, in a news release.

In fact, using the new method could help researchers in characterizing exoplanets and determining which ones are most suitable for life.

"Our goal is to make these laser frequency combs simple and sturdy enough that you can slap them onto every telescope, and you don't have to think about them anymore," said Charles Beichman, one of the researchers. "Having these combs routinely available as a modest add-on to current and future instrumentation really will expand our ability to find potentially habitable planets, particularly around very cool red dwarf stars."

The findings are published in the journal Nature.

Related Articles

Lonely Planet and Its Distant Star are 1 Trillion Kilometers Apart

Alien, Space-Faring Civilizations May be Hiding Within Globular Clusters

For more great science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).