NASA's James Webb Space Telescope may find life through this element, and it's not oxygen

Following the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on December 25 last year, scientists are now chalking out a plan to discover signs of alien life. While the engineers from NASA are working to bring the telescope to life, scientists have found a way to detect life on other planets through a new approach. According to a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists from the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) have planned to look for methane instead of oxygen using the JWST.

How would detecting methane help find alien life?

Although the presence of oxygen on a planet is considered the major factor for habitability, UCSC experts say that some rocky worlds, despite having a low oxygen content could host biological life. UCSC astrophysicist and study author Maggie Thompson said as per CNET, "Oxygen is often talked about as one of the best biosignatures, but it's probably going to be hard to detect with JWST". It is worth noting, that the Webb telescope has been designed to be extremely sensitive to infrared light, which would make it easier to detect methane in the atmosphere of alien worlds.

The researchers of this study have referred to Methane as a 'biosignature', meaning it would hint at the presence of ancient life. Also a strong greenhouse gas, Methane is produced on Earth by underwater volcanos, bacterial decomposition of vegetable matter and vents on the ocean floor. Under the study, the team reportedly examined non-biological methane sources such as volcanoes, reactions in mid-ocean ridges, hydrothermal vents. "If you detect a lot of methane on a rocky planet, you typically need a massive source to explain that. We know biological activity creates large amounts of methane on Earth, and probably did on the early Earth as well because making methane is a fairly easy thing to do metabolically", said study co-author Joshua Krissansen-Totton at UCSC, as per Daily Mail. 

Although the element has been selected as a possible explanation for alien life, Thompson has warned that it might even mislead the experts. "There are two things that could go wrong- you could misinterpret something as a biosignature and get a false positive, or you could overlook something that's a real biosignature", Thompson said as per CNET. 

Image: NASA