NASA discovers methane on distant exoplanet. Here is what it means...

In a major discovery, NASA has found methane on a distant exoplanet, which made it important to be closely observed.

But why is methane such an important discovery? Methane has been able to capture scientific attention due to its short duration in a planetary atmosphere.

This chemical cannot withstand starlight for a longer duration, especially in the terrestrial atmosphere. Methane succumbs to photodissociation and requires it to be continually replenished to maintain its presence in an atmosphere.

If there is presence of huge amount of methane on a rocky planet, then the source is likely to be a massive and biotic one. Biological activity on Earth leads to the creation of an enormous amount of methane.

Metabolically, it is not difficult to create methane. Methane is commonly found in our Solar System, although not in abundance. As per scientists, it is all abiotic. It has also been found on Mars, the Moon and on a few asteroids.

Recently, methane was detected by the James Webb Space Telescope in the atmosphere of exoplanet WASP-80b, which is a gas giant half as big as Jupiter.

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WASP-80b has been orbiting around a K-type main sequence star, which is about 1.5 billion years old. WASP 80 is nearly 162 light-years away, and WASP-80b is the only exoplanet which has been found around the star till now.

Since the exoplanet is a gas giant, there is no scope for life. However, the serpentinisation of olivine, which is methane's most well-known abiotic source, has also been ruled out since the exoplanet is not a rocky planet.

Serpentinisation is an abiotic, natural process which involves water, carbon dioxide, and the mineral olivine. The detection has been presented in a new paper which has been published in the journal Nature.

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Exoplanet like a warm Jupiter, says researchers

The paper has been titled "Methane throughout the atmosphere of the warm exoplanet WASP-80b" and its lead author is Taylor Bell, who is a post-doc researcher at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute.

WASP-80b is like a warm Jupiter, with a temperature of nearly 550 Celsius (1,025 F; 825 K). WASP-80b's temperature puts it in "an interesting transitional regime where equilibrium chemistry models predict that there should be detectable CH4 and CO/CO2 features in the planet's transmission and emission spectra,” explained the authors of the research.

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"However, this definitive detection of methane throughout the atmosphere of WASP-80b with low-resolution, JWST spectroscopy raises the question of to what extent past non-detections were affected by the sparse wavelength coverage and precision achievable with HST and Spitzer," wrote the authors.

"As we find methane and other gases in exoplanets, we will continue to expand our knowledge about how chemistry and physics work under conditions unlike what we have on Earth, and maybe sometime soon, in other planets that remind us of what we have here at home," the authors said in a NASA blog post.

(With inputs from agencies)