It’s useless to have the best shoes if we don’t have the proper training and fitness to run a marathon. It’s something obvious. However, the scientists who now govern data from James Webb might run into a similar problem. space telescope it is the most powerful of its kind ever created, but its information processing technology may not be up to the task. At least that’s what the team suspects. MIT scientiststhe results of which have just been published in Astronomy of nature.
In their opinion, the problem will be to study the atmospheres of exoplanets. This is one of the most important functions of James Webb. In fact, it was exactly one of the first images that he sent on the day of his official inauguration. However, the data they send about it may be misunderstood.
In a statement, these scientists warned that abandoning the discovery due to misinterpretation of the data could cast doubt on the science. That’s why they do caution and careful study of the information provided by James Webb.
Why is James Webb’s data so difficult to interpret?
life is changing atmospheric gas composition planets. It is enough to look at the example of the Earth, whose gas profiles, such as oxygen, carbon dioxide or ozone, are determined by the activities of living beings on it.
Another hypothetical planet with life would not have exactly the same gas profile. However, an estimate can be made as to whether there might be a connection. This is what has been done for years through a mechanism known as opacity model.
This model is based on the fact that different gases in the atmosphere absorb electromagnetic radiation differently. For this reason, if you make light fall on it, by seeing how different wavelengths decay, you can find out what gases are included in its composition.
For many years this has been possible to analyze thanks to Hubblee, because that is what caused the light to pass through the atmosphere exoplanets and he collected data that was radiated back as an attenuation of both wavelengths. With this space telescope and existing data processing tools, rough estimates could be made, now one would expect much more specific data to be obtained with the help of James Webb. But there is no training for such good shoes.
Failure in experiments
These MIT scientists didn’t come to their conclusions just by reasoning. In fact, they took the instruments used in their time with Hubble and ran a number of artificially distorted versions through them. single planet spectrum observed by James Webb. The results were not as concrete as one might expect from such a state of the art space telescope.
In fact, they couldn’t tell if the planet was at tropical 27°C from near-Venusian 300°C. And they also couldn’t tell if the atmospheric pressure was similar to Earth’s or twice Earth’s. They could not even determine the content of gases with an accuracy of five times.
Given this inaccuracy, one could make assumptions, but care must be taken here. A poorly calculated approach can give the population news that, if well received, will eventually be rejected.
Thus, don’t stop analyzing James Webb’s data while waiting for training to do justice to the shoe. but yeah know where are the restrictions until you take everything for granted. In this way, it will be possible to continue working until, little by little, the available processing tools match the tasks of new tools such as James Webb and many others that are yet to come.
Source: Hiper Textual
