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Friday, November 9, 2012

Color exoplanets can tell about its fitness for life support


The new technique, proposed by scientists, allows the color of exoplanets judge about her extremophiles - organisms that can survive in extreme conditions.

Usually extremophiles hiding deep in the earth, but sometimes they are found on the surface or close to it. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Germany, Siddharth Hedge and Lisa Kaltenegger investigated a number of places in which extremophiles live on the surface of the Earth, 


and which in this case are colored bacteria in unusual colors. The researchers then placed the exoplanets in the color chart, and could point out the world that is the most likely candidates for life support systems of stars that resemble the Sun. For planets, the parent star are very different from the Sun, this method may not work, because the microorganisms on such planets in another shift spectral data of the radiation from the star in the reflection of its light.

This discovery can significantly narrow the field of candidates, in which scientists should first pay attention to the search of exoplanets possibly suitable for life.

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