The current movie hit Avatar shows humans visiting ‘the habitable – and inhabited – alien moon called Pandora.’ Such ‘life-bearing moons like Pandora or the Star Wars forest moon of Endor are a staple of science fiction.’

Soon, what science fiction used to offer in the realm of habitable moons may just become a reality with the leap in technology such as ‘NASA’s Kepler mission showing the potential to detect Earth-sized objects.’

Smithsonian astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) has just released a paper which shows that ‘the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be able to study their atmospheres and detect key gases like carbon dioxide, oxygen, and water vapor.’

According to Lisa Kaltenegger, “If Pandora existed, we potentially could detect it and study its atmosphere in the next decade. All of the gas giant planets in our solar system have rocky and icy moons. That raises the possibility that alien Jupiters will also have moons. Some of those may be Earth-sized and able to hold onto an atmosphere.”

Upon Kaltenegger’s calculations as to ‘what conditions are best for examining the atmospheres of alien moons,’ she discovered that ‘alpha Centauri A, the system featured in Avatar, would be an excellent target.’ “Alpha Centauri A is a bright, nearby star very similar to our Sun, so it gives us a strong signal. You would only need a handful of transits to find water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and methane on an Earth-like moon such as Pandora. If the Avatar movie is right in its vision, we could characterize that moon with JWST in the near future,” says Kaltenegger.

Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is a joint collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory. CfA scientists, organized into six research divisions, study the origin, evolution and ultimate fate of the universe.

Image Credit: David A. Aguilar, CfA

Via Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics