Lisa Kaltenegger

Here, finally, JWST should be capable of delivering the goods home.

Another Sagan Institute study, this time led by their director and personal friend, Lisa Kaltenegger, showed that biosignatures would be eminently detectable here.

For example, both ozone and methane, the oxidizer and the reducing agent, could be detected to five sigma confidence within just 30 transits, or equally, one could detect ozone and nitrous oxide with similar numbers.

30 transits seems more reasonable, but let's just check the scheduling requirements quickly here.

Things might be even better for white dwarfs, though.

But to see that, let's take a step back.

Kaltenegger assumed that a transiting planet would be discovered around a white dwarf similar to the star WD 1856.

But the problem with this is that even if every single white dwarf has a planet like that, only 1% of them would have the right coincidental alignment to our line of sight that we could see them transit.