Posted on 02/21/2007 11:40:53 AM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - Scientists taking their first "sniffs of air" from planets outside our solar system are a bit baffled by what they didn't find: water.
One of the more basic assumptions of astronomy is that the two distant, hot gaseous planets they examined must contain water in their atmospheres. The two suns the planets orbit closely have hydrogen and oxygen, the stable building blocks of water. These planets' atmospheres — examined for the first time using light spectra to determine the air's chemical composition — are supposed to be made up of the same thing, good old H2O.
But when two different teams of astronomers used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope for this new type of extrasolar planet research, they both came up dry, according to research published in Thursday's edition of Nature and the online version of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The study of one planet found hints of fine silicate-particle clouds. Research on the other planet found no chemical fingerprints for any of the molecules scientists were seeking.
"We had expected this tremendous signature of water ... and it wasn't there," said the study leader for one team, Carl Grillmair of the California Institute of Technology and Spitzer Science Center. "The very fact that we've been surprised here is a wake-up call. We obviously need to do some more work."
Grillmair's colleague, Harvard astronomy professor David Charbonneau, said these surprising "sniffs of air from an alien world" tell astronomers not to be so Earth-centric in thinking about other planets.
"These are very different beasts. These are unlike any other planets in the solar system," Charbonneau said. "We're limited by our imagination in thinking about the different avenues that these atmospheres take place in."
Our own solar system has two planets without water in the atmosphere, Grillmair noted: Mercury, which doesn't have an atmosphere, and Venus, which is a different type of planet from the huge gaseous ones that would be expected to have the components of water in the air.
So far, scientists have found 213 planets outside our solar system, but only 14 have orbits that make it possible for this type of study; only eight or nine of those are close enough to see. Grillmair's team studied the closest, which goes by the catchy name HD 189733b. It's a mere 360 trillion miles from Earth in the constellation Vulpecula. The other planet, HD209458b, is about 900 trillion miles away in the constellation Pegasus and it's the one with the strange silicate cloud.
So where'd the water go?
Maybe it's hiding, scientists suggest. The water could be under dust clouds, or all the airborne water molecules have the same temperature, making it impossible to see using an infrared spectrograph. Or maybe it's just not there and astronomers have to go back to the drawing board when it comes to these alien planets.
The other finding on the more distant of the two planets seems to indicate that the atmosphere is full of silicon-oxygen compounds, said study lead author L. Jeremy Richardson of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
"They'd be like dust grains and they would form clouds," Richardson said. And that cloud of silicates could be blocking the space telescope from measuring lower-lying water, Richardson and other scientists said.
Not much, what are they silicate chains?
I can't remember the exact reason why Carbon is the only atom that forms stable chains like it does but we went over this in a couple of the biochem and organic chem classes I took WAY back in college.
Silicon is a popular alternative for Macroevolutionists contemplating extraterrestrial life. It is in the crust of rocky planets (at least in the Solar System) in quantities rivaling that of carbon. Furthermore (again, from the Macroevolutionary viewpoint), life simply has to have a way to encode information. On Earth, carbon-based amino acids do this, but in theory silicon could about just as easily be used (as in computers and stuff). Macroevolutionary models of extraterrestrial life don't need DNA either (just a way to encode information), and now even water (hydrogen peroxide, H2O2, could be used, for one).
And, I thought one of Saturn's rings was, and is still being created from water vapor spewed forth from Enceladus? (Or is Enceladus spewing something else?)
And Triton needs a closer look. Io, too, maybe.
If this nonsensical Impact-Splash scenario had happened 4.4B years ago, a mars directly impacts the earth and slashes out the lunar mass into stable orbit beyond the roche lobe, we as water-rich critters wouldn't even BE here. That event would instantly release 10^31 J of KE, a gamma ray burser like the Shoemaker-Levy comet fragments impacting Jupiter in 1994, only of VASTLY greater magnitude.
What settles out AIN'T delicate molecules like H2O, NH3, etc; more like pyroxenes...this planet would be just as sterile as venus. So astronomy geniuses, how did earth's OCEANS get here as early as 3.9B years ago?
Guessing that Io's too hot to have water on it.
everything in that group can form chains but I thought only Carbon could form the necessary rings and other structures necessary. Maybe research has been done since that clarifies this? No I'm not a chemist, I just play one online
There is water vapor in Mars' atmosphere, and it's 99% evident comets have water in them.
That's why I said "maybe".
Don't be confusing the poor man with science.
Life, as we know it.
I don't pretend to be God and know that there are no other forms of life out there.
Polysilanes are Si-H chains and chemically similar to C-H chains but not as robust, they quickly photovolatize in our sunlight. Thus polysilane organisms can only develop on planets with huge cloud covers. This is why the little gray aliens visit earth at NIGHT. Also, living with very low light levels, they depend on polarization to see/discriminate objects, that's why their eyes are long ovals set at 90 degrees or so to each other.
No insult was intended.
"Water is only on this created earth."
That is certainly not true.
There are small iceballs that are frozen water that come from space and pellet the atmosphere of Earth, adding water that was previously not here.
There is so much 'rain' that it had scientists puzzled because it gave off a 'background' noise easy enough to be detected but very, very had to see. Like looking for a needle in a haystack. Eventually,
Satellites and the scanning equipment on them identified this 'noise'.
Many comets also have large amounts of water on them.
Snowballs on Fire. Isn't God Amazing???
Don't ping people behind their figurative back.
Wasn't trying to - I had already pinged him the post prior. Sorry, UG.
If you read the other comments, you would see that several freepers have pointed out that there is extraterrestrial water--most typing (telling) him that in a rather rude manner.
Then sorry, in turn, for comments 36 and 38.
Appreciate the info on polysilanes.
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