(Originally posted to News and Updates from the College of Arts and Sciences Newsletter)

The key to finding extraterrestrial life could lie in clues within the atmospheres of exoplanets. Ji Wang, assistant professor of astronomy, recently led research that used high-dispersion spectroscopy to analyze the atmosphere of a gaseous exoplanet 129 light-years from Earth. This proof of concept pushes the study of exoplanets forward and is a crucial step forward in the search for life outside our universe.