Brazilian astronomer José Dias do Nascimento Júnior is part of the scientific team of the LUVOIR Space Telescope, a project selected by NASA mainly to look for signs of life on other planets.
Considered a kind of successor to the James Webb Space Telescope, the future orbital observatory, which should be launched in the 2040s, will be responsible for “digging up” a lot of science in space, with a focus on exoplanets considered Earth-like, with potential habitability.
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Nascimento holds a degree in Physics, a Masters in Astrophysics from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) and a PhD in Astrophysics and Space Techniques from the Institute of Astrophysics and Planetology, affiliated to the Paul Sabatier University, in Toulouse, France. He has taught at several institutions in Brazil and abroad, and is currently a professor at the Department of Physics at UFRN and an associate researcher at the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics at Harvard, the largest astrophysics laboratory in the world.
In addition, it is also part of some scientific packages related to the future planet finder known as PLATO (Planetary Transits and Star Oscillation), a satellite that should be launched in 2026, replacing NASA’s Kepler space probe. . The project, coordinated by the European Space Agency (ESA), has the contribution of some Brazilian teaching and research institutions.
According to Nascimento, the LUVOIR telescope’s ability to see in ultraviolet light, in addition to infrared, will enable it to capture possible biosignatures (signs of life) on the exoplanets it examines. “This way of ‘attacking the problem’ in two wavelengths, in addition to its very large mirror size, in what we call the ‘collection basin’ of images, will be very efficient in the search for possible signs of life on other planets ”, said the researcher.
Nascimento explains that the LUVOIR telescope is the most modern in planetary observation. “It represents a major step forward in this sequence that started with Hubble, followed by James Webb, and later, LUVOIR. A sequence of equipment that will make history regarding the characterization of the discovered exoplanets”.
Asked by presenter Marcelo Zurita about the possibility of discovering life on other planets, and when that would happen, the guest said that, first of all, it is necessary to clarify the definition of life.
“The detection of life involves, first of all, defining what life is. If we had to define life today, we would very possibly have a terrible difficulty knowing at what level of structure life as we know it would be”, explained Nascimento. “So we’re looking for a link between life as we know it and the chemical part, which is the fundamental makeup of life. There is a missing link in this complexity: which are the molecules, the pre-biological chains. And detecting all that chemistry is going to be a huge step forward.”
And that, according to him, is not far from happening. “The impression I have is that finding life, if you consider that life is the detection of something as we know it, like a bacterium, we have absolutely no chance (when looking for exoplanets). However, I think that we will be able to detect molecules with sufficient complexity to say ‘look, if there is no life, it is a matter of time, but we have all the conditions there’, that is, all the probabilistic biosignatures of formation of life. The LUVOIR generation will already be able to see this ad. We will be at home, and television will say that science has just detected a molecule very close to what would be one of the primitive molecules in the form that we have already detected on Earth.”
Nascimento revealed that a group of researchers at UFRN is studying rocks collected in the interior of Rio Grande do Norte that are part of the Archean – the oldest group of rocks on Earth. “Among them, we have crystallized rocks containing prehistoric beings inside. These are things that are millions of years old, which only exist in Russia, Australia and Rio Grande do Norte. We are characterizing the first samples. Of course, we will not have access to primitive life, but we will be able to examine the residues left inside the rocks, allowing the characterization of primitive biological life.”
He explains that this research, unprecedented in Brazil, can provide very important data on how life was formed on Earth, which, without a doubt, is totally related to space. “In space, there would be no reason to be different. So, LUVOIR and other equipment will allow us to look and try to detect, for example, molecules of oxygen, ozone, methane, that is, all the photochemistry of habitability that is present on the analyzed planet.”
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