Posted on 02/11/2008 4:29:07 PM PST by blam
Organic molecules found on alien world for first time
18:21 11 February 2008
NewScientist.com news service
Stephen Battersby
The giant planet HD 189733b is too hot for its methane and water vapour to signal life (Illustration: Christophe Carreau/ESA)Tools
Organic molecules – in the form of methane – have been detected on a planet outside our solar system for the first time. The giant planet lies too close to its parent star for the methane to signal life, but the detection offers hope that astronomers will one day be able to analyse the atmospheres of Earth-like worlds.
Astronomers Mark Swain and Gautam Vasisht of Caltech in Pasadena, US, and Giovanna Tinetti of University College London, UK, used the Hubble Space Telescope to observe the giant planet HD 189733b, which is slightly more massive than Jupiter and lies 63 light years from Earth.
Because the planet crosses the face of its parent star as seen from Earth, some starlight is periodically filtered through the planet's atmosphere, where different chemicals absorb particular wavelengths.
The observations confirm an earlier tentative detection of water vapour and reveal the presence of methane gas.
"Initially, that is surprising," says Sara Seager of MIT in Cambridge, US, who was not involved in the study. Because HD 189733b orbits very close to its parent star – just 10% of Mercury's distance from the Sun, it is very hot, with atmospheric temperatures of about 700° Celsius. "When the temperature is this high, the dominant form of carbon should be carbon monoxide, not methane," says Seager.
The authors suggest that some ill-understood chemical process might be responsible, either concentrating the methane in cooler parts
(Excerpt) Read more at space.newscientist.com ...
Organic molecules are expected. They are found even in gas clouds between stars. If they find an oxygen atmosphere on a planet, that would be a sign of life as we know it. Otherwise, not.
Who knew Hillary had her own planet.
Well, since the only solar system we know much about has planets and life the assumption would be that life is likely to occur and abundant. That such an idea is foreign to the many religions as well as the current set of fixed ideas we call ‘science’ doesn’t reduce it’s validity.
I’m always amused by the egocentric similarity of religious people and scientists who both claim that life is unique to one planet in one corner of one galaxy in a universe of apparently limitless scope.
I’m sure I’ll get burned at the stake for this. Or have my grant threatened.
If we found such a planet and life hadn’t even developed on it yet, let alone grown to the tipping point as our own has, it would be worth as much as a case full of ice cream to a kid standing outside a padlocked soda shop.
It's a dry heat (1,292° F).
It’s more than conjecture. Instruments have been landed on Titan. Spectroscopes and stuff. Seas of hydrocarbon, abiotic origin.
H2O and CH4 (water and methane) are very common chemicals in the universe.
Temperatures just have to be a little higher than absolute zero and slightly lower than the surface of a star for the elements to combine in this form.
X-Planet Ping.
Nonsense! It's the great Dinosaur Graveyard in the sky!
That’s possible. Dinosaurs wouldn’t do well at -250 so they died and turned to oil.
That’s possible. Dinosaurs wouldn’t do well at -250 so they died and turned to oil.
Thats what they want you to think.
“That such an idea is foreign to the many religions as well as the current set of fixed ideas we call ‘science’ doesn’t reduce it’s validity.”
Well, from a Christian point of view, I have always been fascinated by questions such as these:
1. If there are extraterrestrial civilizations, does each one have a “Savior” with both Divine and local natures?
2. Does each have a “Mary, the Mother of the Savior?”
3. Are there a whole collection of such “Marys” all assumed into “Heaven?”
Sunblock 5000.
LLS
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No it wouldn’t. Our atmosphere would show up as predominantly nitrogen at those distances.
I think there are more scientists that allow for the possibility of life beyond our planet than religious people. I could be wrong...but I doubt it.
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