Watch in 1080p. See how the Webb Space Telescope will study planetary bodies with our solar system and planets orbiting other stars. Its operations in the years to come promise to help scientists better understand how planets form and how they evolve. Planets begin as dense knots in clouds of dust swirling around a young star. But how do they go from something like this, to something like this? With the James Webb Space Telescope astronomers will be able to study how planets come to be and how they change as they get older. After centuries of searching, astronomers are finding exoplanets just about everywhere. Ranging from giant planets with masses much greater than Jupiter’s to worlds only a few times more massive than Earth. But where do the planets we know best fit into the menagerie of worlds astronomers are finding? How did our solar system come to be the way it is? Why is Earth a balmy water rich world and are there other worlds like it elsewhere in the galaxy? These are the kind of questions astronomers will address with Webb. For planets that pass directly in front of their stars, Webb will search for chemical fingerprints, identifying atmospheric gases like water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane that absorb specific wavelengths of the star’s light. Webb will also study the dusty disks where new planets form to reveal how the chemical compositions of younger and older disks change with time, and identifying how these changes are reflected in the planets we find …
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