By Ron Cowen
Editor’s note: SN Online originally posted the following story November 21. On December 9, the European Space Agency formally announced the Hubble Space Telescope findings and the story was reposted.
Moving one step closer to finding the fingerprints of life in a habitable planet beyond the solar system, astronomers have for the first time detected carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet that orbits a star other than the sun.
The extrasolar planet and its star lie about 63 light-years from Earth. A gaseous body slightly bigger than Jupiter, the orb circles its parent star at a proximity that renders it far too hot to support life. But the finding bodes well for ultimately detecting carbon dioxide and other potential markers of life in planets that do lie far enough from their parent stars to be habitable, says Mark Swain of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.