Posted on 12/04/2013 7:16:52 AM PST by oxcart
Washington: In an encouraging sign of life beyond earth, Nasa scientists have found faint signatures of water in the atmospheres of five distant planets.
Though the presence of atmospheric water was reported previously on a few exo-planets orbiting stars beyond the solar system, but this is the first study to conclusively measure and compare the profiles and intensities of these signatures on multiple worlds, Nasa said.
The strengths of their water signatures varied, it said. WASP-17b, a planet with an especially puffed-up atmosphere, and HD209458b had the strongest signals. The signatures for the other three planets, WASP-12b, WASP-19b and XO-1b, also are consistent with water, Nasa said.
"We're very confident that we see a water signature for multiple planets," said Avi Mandell, a planetary scientist at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of an Astrophysical Journal paper, published yesterday, describing the findings for WASP-12b, WASP-17b and WASP-19b.
"This work really opens the door for comparing how much water is present in atmospheres on different kinds of exoplanets, for example hotter versus cooler ones," Mandell said.
Nasa said the five planets are hot Jupiters, massive worlds that orbit close to their host stars. The researchers were initially surprised that all five appeared to be hazy.
"These studies, combined with other Hubble observations, are showing us that there are a surprisingly large number of systems for which the signal of water is either attenuated or completely absent," said Heather Knutson of the California Institute of Technology, a co-author.
"This suggests that cloudy or hazy atmospheres may in fact be rather common for hot Jupiters," he added.
(((PING)))
Take it from me. Life is ALL OVER the universe, just as it is on Earth. Take a spoonful of dirt from any square inch of Earth and examine it, and you’ll find life. LOTS of it. I have always believed that the Universe is teeming with life from one end to the other.
File in useless information file.
I recall when the US could send men into orbit.
Climate change?</snark>
Yeah I think its pretty likely. Probably not like us but likely.
WASP-17b?
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant with 17 blacks?.............
I recall when Elvis Presley could send women into orbit.................
Good Lord. Racist planets.
Why the surprise? we already know that black holes are racist.
From looking at reflected light they decide there must be water on planets that are millions or billions of miles away.
Well we are never getting there to find out and they are never getting here, except in Hollywood movies.
So keep staring at those lights guys, they might as well be lights on a Christmas tree.
Watering holes?
Take a spoonful of dirt on Mars and you won't find any evidence of life whatsoever. The question isn't settled but so far Martian soil appears to have all the characteristics of being extremely sterile. And so the question of life elsewhere int he universe is still a very open question. There are extremely compelling arguments and bunches of evidence supporting both sides of the argument right now.
Yes it's a validated scientific process called spectroscopy. I agree we won't ever be going there, but understanding the composition of far away bodies by studying their reflected light is quite reliable. It may be difficult to understand, but trust me when I say that part of the argument has been proven and tested many times over.
Never said I was surprised. Just wait till they figure out ‘dark matter’.
So is this WASP planet a white-anglo-saxon planet as the name implies? That is so racist! I think a certain African-American congresscritter is going to complain about this.
Until we actually find life somewhere else or figure out how to create life from scratch in a laboratory we really have no way of knowing if life is common, rare or only on Earth.
It is very possible that the formation of life requires a trillion random occurrences that have never happened anywhere else.
“Take it from me. Life is ALL OVER the universe, just as it is on Earth.”
Yeah, sure. Next time they drop by your house for dinner, take a polaroid.
I always wondered why the landers haven't gone closer to the polar ice caps. Since it's a general assumption now that water is necessary for life, if you're looking for microbes or other such things, why not go where the water is?
Gotta keep the whole “if it happened here, it had to happen elsewhere” fantasy going.
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