UWash: Early Earth's Haze May Give Clue to Habitability Elsewhere

[bystander]

‘Pale Orange Dot’: Early Earth's Haze May Give Clue to Habitability Elsewhere in Space
University of Washington, Seattle | 2015 Nov 11

[img3="An image of Saturn’s haze-shrouded moon Titan taken by the Cassini spacecraft. The UW-based Virtual Planetary Laboratory studied records of the haze on early Earth to see how such atmospheric conditions might affect an exoplanet, or one beyond our solar system. They found that such a haze might show the world is habitable, or that life itself is present. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)"]http://www.washington.edu/news/files/20 ... 20x370.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]

An atmospheric haze around a faraway planet — like the one which probably shrouded and cooled the young Earth — could show that the world is potentially habitable, or even be a sign of life itself.

Astronomers often use the Earth as a proxy for hypothetical exoplanets in computer modeling to simulate what such worlds might be like and under what circumstances they might be hospitable to life.

In new research from the University of Washington-based Virtual Planetary Laboratory, UW doctoral student Giada Arney and co-authors chose to study Earth in its Archean era, about 2 ½ billion years back, because it is, as Arney said, “the most alien planet we have geochemical data for.”

The work builds on geological data from other researchers that suggests the early Earth was intermittently shrouded by an organic pale orange haze that came from light breaking down methane molecules in the atmosphere into more complex hydrocarbons, organic compounds of hydrogen and carbon. ...

[neufer]

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LISA: I can't believe that extra-thick layer of pollution that I've picketed against is what burned up the comet.!

[Ann]

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LISA: I can't believe that extra-thick layer of pollution that I've picketed against is what burned up the comet.!

Every extra-thick layer of pollution has a silver lining (or layer), particularly good at burning up comets.

Ann

[Beyond]

Who is LISA?

[Ann]

Who is LISA?

Click to view full size image

It could be the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna Project (LISA) too, designed to detect gravity waves. But I think not.

Ann