Researchers have shown that if the James Webb Space Telescope was pointed at Earth from a distant star, it could detect the signatures of intelligent life in our planet's atmosphere.
in search of clues about how the early universe formed. But one of the telescope's secondary objectives is to analyze the atmospheres of nearby exoplanets, or planets beyond the solar system, to look for gases produced by biological life, known as biosignatures, and chemicals produced by advanced alien civilizations, known as technosignatures.
The results, which have not yet been peer-reviewed, show that JWST could likely detect all the key markers of non-intelligent and intelligent life in our planet's atmosphere. This graph shows the raw atmospheric data used in the new study. Specific biosignatures and technosignatures are highlighted in different colors.
The researchers noted that the quality of the altered dataset is roughly equivalent to JWST observations of planets from— a star system containing seven exoplanets that orbit a red dwarf star around 40 light-years from Earth. This suggests the telescope should be able to detect life or alien civilizations on exoplanets within 40 light-years of Earth. But the team believes JWST could possibly detect signs of extraterrestrial life up to 50 light-years from Earth.
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