'The idea is to first understand what happens in front of your own door before you go into deeper studies elsewhere.'
Scientists believe they have detected a form of oxygen created by living organisms in space surrounding our planet, as per a new study outlining their findings.
The new discovery, made using data from NASA's now-retired Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy flying telescope, could help develop new methods for tracing life on distant habitable exoplanets.NASA's SOFIA telescope wasdue in large part to budget issues. The telescope was mounted aboard an adapted Boeing 747 that would fly to an altitude of up to 42,000 ft . This took it above 99.
Heavy oxygen is a form of oxygen that features ten neutrons in its nucleus instead of the eight present in the air we typically breathe. High concentrations of heavy oxygen are found close to Earth's surface, as it is produced by photosynthetic organisms, much like normal oxygen. "It's tracing biological activity — that's well-proven," Helmut Wiesemeyer, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany and lead author of the new study, explained in a
. "So far, the altitude to which this signature extends was thought to be 60 kilometers [around 37 miles] — so, barely the lower part of the mesosphere."
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