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JWST hunts for an 'Earth-moon' twin in a habitable zone, but the star has other plans

Phys · · 704 words · By Andy Tomaswick
Scientific Discovery/Exoplanets

Astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to search for an exomoon orbiting the planets TOI-700 d and TOI-700 e. The search was complicated by a repeating noise pattern, known as 'red noise,' generated by stellar granulation, which obscured the faint signal expected from a moon. The research concluded that definitive evidence remains elusive, suggesting future algorithmic improvements may be necessary for a breakthrough.

open_in_new Read the original article: https://phys.org/news/2026-04-jwst-earth-moon-twin-habitable.html

analyticsAnalysis

10%
Propaganda Score
confidence: 95%
Low risk. This article shows minimal use of propaganda techniques.

psychologyDetected Techniques

warning
Loaded Language 60% confidence
Using words with strong emotional connotations to influence an audience.

fact_checkFact-Check Results

11 claims extracted and verified against multiple sources including cross-references, web search, and Wikipedia.

check_circle Corroborated 5
info Single Source 3
help Insufficient Evidence 2
schedule Pending 1
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“The moon has played a huge role in the development of Earth. It stabilizes the planet, tempers dramatic climate swings, and possibly even provides the tidal heating that might have led to the first life forms.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple web search results discuss the stabilizing role of the Moon on Earth's climate and planetary stability, citing concepts like tidal heating and atmospheric retention, which corroborates the claim's core points.
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web search NEUTRAL — Three possible episodes of tidal heating of the Moon can be identified: the evection resonance, at approximately 8 Earth radii (RE) 27, 28, 29; the Laplace plane transition (LPT), at 16-22 RE ...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08231-0
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web search NEUTRAL — But a neighboring shield may have helped our planet retain its atmosphere and eventually go on to develop life and habitable conditions. That shield was the Moon, says a NASA-led study in the journal …
https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/earth-and-moon-once-shared…
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web search NEUTRAL — Discover how Earth without Moon would disrupt planetary stability, affecting rotation, tides, and climate—and why complex life couldn't survive these changes.
https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/61278/20260208/earth-w…
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“A new paper, available on the arXiv preprint server, from Emily Pass and her colleagues at MIT, Harvard, and the University of Chicago describes using the James Webb Space Telescope to track some of the most promising exomoon candidates—only to be foiled by the star they were orbiting.”
SINGLE SOURCE
The specific details regarding 'Emily Pass et al.' using JWST to search for exomoons and being 'foiled by the star' are not corroborated by the provided web search or Wikipedia results. The evidence provided for this claim is generic or irrelevant to the specific scientific finding described.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Jared Taylor Isaacman (born February 11, 1983) is an American billionaire entrepreneur, pilot, and commercial astronaut who has served as the 15th administrator of NASA since December 2025. He is the …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Isaacman
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — LeBron Raymone James ( lə-BRON; born December 30, 1984) is an American professional basketball player for the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Nicknamed "King James", h…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LeBron_James
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — This is a list of known objects which occupy, have occupied, or are planned to occupy any of the five Lagrange points of two-body systems in space.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrange_po…
+ 3 more evidence sources
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“That star is TOI-700. Located about 100 light years away from Earth, TOI-700 is a small M-dwarf star that has a wide variety of known exoplanets, including two Earth-sized ones in the "habitable" zone, known as TOI-700 d and TOI-700 e.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple web search results and Wikipedia entries confirm that TOI-700 is a small M-dwarf star located around 100 light-years away in the Dorado constellation, and that it hosts TOI-700 d and TOI-700 e, which are described as Earth-sized and within the habitable zone.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The list of exoplanets detected by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) contains bodies with a wide variety of properties, with significant ranges in orbital distances, masses, radii, comp…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exoplanets_discovered_…
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — A super-Earth is a type of exoplanet with a mass higher than Earth's, but substantially below those of the Solar System's ice giants, Uranus and Neptune, which are 14.5 and 17.1 times Earth's mass res…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-Earth
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — TOI-1338 is a binary star system located in the constellation Pictor, about 1,320 light-years from Earth. It is orbited by two known circumbinary planets, TOI-1338 b, discovered by the Transiting Exop…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOI-1338
+ 3 more evidence sources
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“According to the paper, these planets are the best candidates we have for holding onto a stable moon, due to their proximity and gravitational pull.”
CORROBORATED
Web search results explicitly state that TOI-700 d and TOI-700 e are considered the best candidates for holding onto a stable moon, referencing the findings from the paper.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The list of exoplanets detected by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) contains bodies with a wide variety of properties, with significant ranges in orbital distances, masses, radii, comp…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exoplanets_discovered_…
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — TOI-700 is a red dwarf 101.4 light-years away from Earth located in the Dorado constellation that hosts TOI-700 d, the first Earth-sized exoplanet in the habitable zone discovered by the Transiting Ex…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOI-700
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — TOI-700 d is a dense, rocky, near-Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of the red dwarf TOI-700. It is located roughly 101.4 light-years (31.1 pc) away from Earth in the constellat…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOI-700_d
+ 3 more evidence sources
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“Data described in the paper increased the accuracy of our orbital estimates of the planets by an order of magnitude, and improved our measure of their radius (1.145 times Earth for d and 0.919 times Earth for e) by a factor of 2 to 3.”
SINGLE SOURCE
The specific quantitative improvements (order of magnitude increase in orbital estimates, factor of 2 to 3 improvement in radius) are mentioned in the context of the paper's findings, but the provided evidence does not contain the original paper or independent confirmation of these precise numerical improvements.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The list of exoplanets detected by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) contains bodies with a wide variety of properties, with significant ranges in orbital distances, masses, radii, comp…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exoplanets_discovered_…
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — TOI-700 is a red dwarf 101.4 light-years away from Earth located in the Dorado constellation that hosts TOI-700 d, the first Earth-sized exoplanet in the habitable zone discovered by the Transiting Ex…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOI-700
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — TOI-700 d is a dense, rocky, near-Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of the red dwarf TOI-700. It is located roughly 101.4 light-years (31.1 pc) away from Earth in the constellat…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOI-700_d
+ 3 more evidence sources
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“The researchers calculated that, in order to detect a Luna-analog, JWST would need to detect a 20 parts per million (ppm) dip in starlight.”
CORROBORATED
A web search result directly quotes the calculation that detecting a Luna-analog requires JWST to detect a 20 parts per million (ppm) dip in starlight.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space telescope designed to conduct infrared astronomy. It is the largest telescope in space, and is equipped with high-resolution and high-sensitivity instr…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — MoM-z14 is the most distant known galaxy, with a redshift of z = 14.44. The galaxy was first imaged on 16 May 2025 by the NIRcam instrument aboard the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). That image cap…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoM-z14
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The spacecraft bus is a carbon fibre box that houses systems of the telescope and so is the primary support element of the James Webb Space Telescope, launched on 25 December 2021. It hosts a multitud…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacecraft_bus_(James_Webb_Spa…
+ 3 more evidence sources
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“When analyzing the data, the research team realized there was a repeating noise pattern known as "red noise." This signal is caused by stellar granulation—the boiling and bubbling that happens in the plasma on the surface of a star.”
CORROBORATED
Web search results confirm the existence and definition of 'red noise' and its association with stellar activity or noise patterns, though the specific mechanism of 'stellar granulation' is not explicitly linked across multiple sources.
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web search NEUTRAL — The term "red noise" comes from the "white noise"/"white light" analogy; red noise is strong in longer wavelengths, similar to the red end of the visible spectrum. In acoustics, this translates to a s…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_noise
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web search NEUTRAL — In general, yield predictions assume uncorrelated noise (‘white noise’). In this paper, we show that the effect of red noise on the detection threshold and the expected yields cannot be neglected in t…
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/1789409_The_effect_…
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web search NEUTRAL — 'Red noise can trick us'. But, of course, pulsars also generate their own noise, which can muddy the signals. "Pulsars do have some intrinsic noise called 'red noise,'" Witt said.
https://phys.org/news/2023-06-narrows-elusive-pairs-monster-…
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“The signal itself oscillated every 16 minutes and had an amplitude of around 46 ppm—essentially washing out any 20 ppm signal a moon might give off.”
SINGLE SOURCE
The specific details—oscillation every 16 minutes and amplitude of 46 ppm—are presented together in the context of the research findings, but this precise combination of numbers is not corroborated by other sources provided.
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web search NEUTRAL — In science, Brownian noise, also known as Brown noise or red noise, is the type of signal noise produced by Brownian motion, hence its alternative name of random walk noise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_noise
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web search NEUTRAL — Abstract In the past, the signal-to-noise of a chromatographic peak determined from a single measurement has served as a convenient figure of merit used to compare the performance of two different MS …
https://www.agilent.com/cs/library/technicaloverviews/public…
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web search NEUTRAL — A common way to statistically assess the significance of a broad spectral peak in signals and the synchronization between signals is to compare with simple noise processes. At present, wavelet analysi…
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1155/2021/5462965
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“The best conclusion the researchers could draw with that level of certainty was that their observations were only sensitive to moons larger than Ganymede (the largest moon in our own solar system) on orbits longer than 2 days.”
INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
No evidence was found in the provided search results or Wikipedia entries to confirm or deny the specific conclusion regarding sensitivity limits (larger than Ganymede on orbits longer than 2 days).
help
“The researchers also determined that, if someone was able to develop a noise-reducing algorithm that can remove the "red noise," and if there is actually a moon in the system, the dataset should show it.”
INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
No evidence was found in the provided search results or Wikipedia entries to confirm or deny the specific conclusion regarding the visibility of a moon's signal after noise reduction.
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“Emily K. Pass et al, The JWST Search for Earth-Luna Analogs: Upper Limits on Exomoons and Refined Ephemerides for TOI 700 d and e, arXiv (2026). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2604.05235”
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info Disclaimer: This analysis is generated by AI and should be used as a starting point for critical thinking, not as definitive truth. Claims are verified against publicly available sources. Always consult the original article and additional sources for complete context.