Which is why this Great Oxidation Event is also called the Oxygen Catastrophe. Apparently, the earliest mass extinction event in the record of life on this planet.
And Lo! A new life form evolved that actually ate that shit!
Now, as our present atmosphere approaches the Carbon Dioxide Catastophe level, can we hope that yet another new life form will evolve that eats that?
Oh wait a minute – That was already here first! So why isn’t there ever more of it growing to take over the world?
There would be if we didn’t keep burning it down.
I wonder whether there could be life swimming in the seas of a lava-ocean planet?
And since it’s everywhere the bits we aren’t burning down is already there and often up against other limits than that one input. (Water, essential minerals, sunlight).
Which of JWST’s 4 science goal themes would most excite you to see a (realistic) major discovery made?:
- First Light and Reionization
- Assembly of Galaxies
- The Birth of Stars and Protoplanetary Systems
- Planetary Systems and the Origins of Life
And, what breaking-news headline would instill you with the “wow” factor? [fill in the blank]:
JWST DISCOVERS [BLANK]
I’d choose #1, with the following headline:
JWST DISCOVERS EVIDENCE THE BIG BANG THEORY IS WRONG!
I would be more excited for evidence of advanced civilizations to be discovered, but I don’t believe that is something JWST is seeking or capable of finding beyond the galaxy. Simply finding abundant planetary biosignatures would of course be fascinating news, but not all that unexpected (at least by me). Therefore, for me, a more precise and detailed understanding of the origin of our universe is a realistic goal that most excites me, especially if the findings are unexpected…and weird.
If by “major discovery” in theme #4 we may imply “strong evidence of life”, I’d have to say this option excites me most. I’m counting this “realistic” by supposing it’s within our galaxy and not beyond it.
As an aside, by quoting part of your post, I just learned that the numbers 1-4 get reassigned on the fly.
Man, making me pick between my four favorite children…
If signs of life is found, then 4. Otherwise, earlier is better and seeing the first stars lighting up would give the greatest insight into the early universe.
CFC compounds on an exoplanet. This would be pretty definitive proof of not just life, but intelligent life at around our technological level. There are certain implications of that that I don’t like, but it would solve one of humanity’s oldest questions, “Are we alone?”
That would be interesting, but not really possible, as it would have to somewho explain why all earlier observations, starting with Hubble (the astronomer, not the telescope) were wrong.
Depends on what those civs are doing. If they are converting an entire galaxy into a K-3 civilization, then we’d be able to see that easily with JWST, and we’ll be looking at a whole lot of galaxies.
OTOH, the galaxies that it is going to be focusing on the most are the ones that are really far away, and so looking back in time pretty far. If we are looking back to only a couple billion years after the big bang, it’s unlikely that the conditions are going to be favorable for life.
Most of the more in depth searching for life will be done more in our backyard, imaging the atmospheres of relatively nearby exoplanets.
IMHO, I would find that to be unexpected, but that’s kinda the whole point. The question of whether life is out there is a more existential one. In many ways, JWST looking at the light of a newborn galaxy isn’t going to actually create new science, it’s going to confirm what we already thought we knew with only small corrections based on this new data.
Now confirming what we think we know and discovering and correcting small flaws in our understanding is what science is all about, so I’m not knocking it at all, but we do have a pretty good idea as to what we expect to see. I don’t think that we will find anything truly unexpected, though we may end up finding evidence that gives credence to theories that didn’t have much support, and throwing out theories that were more mainstream.
On the life front, we really don’t have enough data to have any idea what we will see, and so I think that improving our understanding of the evolution and prevalence of life in the universe will get far more mileage, whichever way that turns out.
the list of cosmic objects that Webb targeted for the first observations:
-
Carina Nebula
The Carina Nebula is one of the largest and brightest nebulae in the sky, located approximately 7,600 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. Nebulae are stellar nurseries where stars form. The Carina Nebula is home to many massive stars, several times larger than the Sun. -
WASP-96b (spectrum)
WASP-96b is a giant planet outside our Solar System, composed mainly of gas. The planet, located nearly 1,150 light-years from Earth, orbits its star every 3.4 days. It has about half the mass of Jupiter, and its discovery was announced in 2014. -
Southern Ring Nebula
The Southern Ring, or “Eight-Burst” nebula, is a planetary nebula – an expanding cloud of gas, surrounding a dying star. It is nearly half a light-year in diameter and is located approximately 2,000 light years away from Earth. -
Stephan’s Quintet
About 290 million light-years away, Stephan’s Quintet is located in the constellation Pegasus. It is notable for being the first compact galaxy group ever discovered. Four of the five galaxies within the quintet are locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters. -
SMACS 0723
Massive foreground galaxy clusters magnify and distort the light of objects behind them, permitting a deep field view into both the extremely distant and intrinsically faint galaxy populations.
For me it would be unexpected, even though I think there pretty much has to be life out there, many many places in each typical galaxy. It’s unexpected because there have already been many attempts to look for it, including many big advances in the threshold of detection or the distance at which we would probably detect somebody like us. I think one of these steps will find life. But at each new step, I don’t expect this to be the one.
Some time ago I read an attempt to predict how soon the detection would happen, and wound up thinking it would probably be within my lifetime, so at this point the next 20 years. I still think that, but with each passing year I’m less expectant. When we get to my likely last year, if there’s still no detection, I’m not going to expect it that year.
We really haven’t done a very thorough search. There could be life as close as Mars, and we just haven’t seen it yet. If there is life on the moons of the gas giants, we may see it in the upcoming probes, but that’s still a way out. And there could be life just like us at the next star over, and we would be fairly clueless as to its presence.
I’m not expecting to see advanced life, and I will be a bit surprised to see any, but not because we have done even close to a reasonable job of looking.
OTOH, our capabilities are increasing with each passing year, so the chances of making a determination one way of another are always increasing as well. Each passing year makes me more expectant to see an answer.
So, what do you think the probability is within the next year? Or the next 20?
I’m going to put out there the following marker: 60% probability we find evidence of extraterrestrial life by July 2042, evidence that creates broad scientific consensus that the life is really there. Who else feels like giving odds?
I was curious why Wasp-96b was the first exoplanet target rather than the multiple potentially habitable worlds in the Trappist-1 system, which is also much closer. Wasp-96b is not likely to be life-bearing, and is described thusly:
WASP-96b is a cloudless world with a sodium rich atmosphere. The planet, located nearly 1,150 light-years from Earth, orbits its star every 3.4 days. It has about half the mass of Jupiter
Apparently it’s because WASP-96b has a very thick atmosphere and so the analysis is easier to do. My understanding is that the Trappist system will be the subject of an extensive study with the Webb which I believe is one of the approved projects for the first year.
I mean, I think it’s zero, as I don’t think that we will find life out there.
But, as we send more stuff out, we will get a better idea of what is. We are sending probes to Enceladus and Europa, we are looking out into the universe with JWST.
These are tools that we didn’t have before, they will see life, if there is life to be seen. This either finds life, answering the question, or it doesn’t, and gives one more data point against it.
Yeah, low hanging fruit that doesn’t take a whole lot of telescope time, but lets us know what it is capable of.
Because it needs to keep that sun shield correctly positioned, JWST is limited in the directions it can point at any given time. Over the course of a full year, it can point to any place in the entire sky, but some highly desired targets might still be months away from its currently available window for observations.
One thing to keep in mind, as Isaac Asimov said, most major discoveries don’t begin with, “Aha!” but rather, “Hmmm, that’s funny.” Right now, our sample of planets with life is 1. While we can extrapolate a certain amount knowledge from that sample, we can’t really know if it is totally representational of the solar system, never mind the universe as a whole.
On Monday, July 11 at 5pm ET (21:00 UTC), President Biden will unveil one of the space telescope's first images of deep space as a preview of what's ahead: [https://go.nasa.gov/3NUQ8Dx](https://t.co/kP5JdQEpVz)
That’s in 96 minutes! 
Cool. CNN says it will also stream live on NASA’s site,
Hmm, Nasa’s Twitter account says images will be unveiled at 5pm EST. Nasa’s web site says 5:30pm EST. 