Slashdot Mirror
Alien Atmosphere Hubbled
b-side.org writes "Yahoo! News has a story on yon giant hubble mirrorscope thingy locating an alien, mostly sodium, atmosphere. X10.com popunder ads also included free of charge." Mm....let's mix that atmosphere with water. T cuts in: This turns out to be the major discovery hinted at a few days ago.
Mmm... Sodium. Anyone else feel like getting some Ramen all of the sudden?
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I'd like my atmosphere with extra MSG please.
Michael Jackson's soul is for sale.
tcd004
Obviously, it's still highly contraversial. However, now that it seems very likely that there are thousands, millions and billions of planets out there everywhere... we must assume many earth like planets as well, IMHO.
Anyone care to submit their suggestions as to the number of (potentially) intelligent civilizations lurking around?
Mmmmmmm. Floor pie!
I can't really say I'm suprised. Most planets detected outsided our solar system are massive giants anyway, so one would assume that they were Jupiter-ish. These planets would most likely be gas giants anyway, so this seems more a confirmation of common sense than any breakthrough.
I mean, it's cool, but when they find a small, water based world with an atmosphere, then I'll get excited. As for now I'll just shrug and say, "figures".
Could you possibly have chosen a more incoherent and factually incorrect submission for posting? The atmosphere is not mostly sodium as "b-side.org" seemingly just guessed. The reason sodium was measured is because it is relatively easy to detect. NASA has a more informative story.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
We are probably surrounded by many planets with an atmosphere. If a solar system is capable of having a Jupiter type planet, what about an Earth type planet? It isn't THAT far of a stretch.
As Carl Sagan says (or was it just Contact?) "If it is just us, it seems like an awful waste of space."
div
Guess we could not colonize this planet since our people would be dead from Heart attacks and Hypertention in about 2 weeks ;-)
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
from the Guardian
KWA: Karma Whore's Anonymous
- crayz
Why are we just looking around? We have the technology! Let's at least go to Mars. Consider that eventually Earth will die. Sooner or later we must be prepared to go somewhere else. I think we should start now.
Also consider we live in an infinite universe. There are infinite worlds, and infinitly many of them can support life, and infinitly many of them DO support it. Infinity, think about it.
I have to wonder how much business do they actually get from their ads? I mean... I was planning on buying several hundreds to mid-thousand dollars worth of wireless security stuff and they were who I thought of to go to(before the ads). However, now I would be reluctant to even let them send me a free firecracker kit because they've annoyed me so much. I wouldn't give them a dime no matter what. So now I'm ordering all of my wireless stuff from smarthome.com nearly purely because of their advertising tactics (Although, smarthome.com actually has a lot more stuff).
Have the ads had this effect on anyone else? Are these ads actually effective at making sales? I would think about any professional would stay way far away from any company with ads like that.
Ian
The atmosphere is mostly sodium, but it probably is a cation as elemental sodium reacts in most substances. hence water would not react with it.
The more significant discovery was that of the extra solar planet in the first place... Is it surprising that a massive planet as this has an atmosphere?
;)
I did not see any other elements besides sodium mentioned in the yahoo or nasa articles.. Perhaps their spectroscopy instruments have detected something else? How many planets in our solar system have detectable amounts of Na in the atmosphere? Inquiring minds want to know
Time to dive into nasa's site..
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
How is this "News For Nerds, Stuff that Matters"??? NASA found planets years ago. Now, through spectral anaylysis, they have sodium. Big deal.
The linux radio monitor was sooo much cooler.
T cuts in: This turns out to be the major discovery hinted at a few days ago.
would that be the plantery atmosphere or the X10 ads?
"When the color of the light was analyzed by STIS, the telltale "fingerprint" of sodium was detected."
I'm no chemistry or space exploration expert, so can someone please answer this for me: Do they mean Na+ or actual elemental sodium? I wouldn't expet to find water or anything that would sustain carbon-based life on a planet whose atmosphere had significant amounts of elemental sodium.
Still, the discovery for the first time of an atmosphere
around a planet outside our solar system was heralded as a
breakthrough in planetary exploration.
DETROIT, Mich -- In a news conference today, General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner discussed the possibilities of expanding the automobile market to new, fresh atmospheres outside our solar system.
"We really excited about the prospect of intersolar expansion," said Wagoner. "Before we were dragged kicking and screaming by the federal government into making cleaner -- but more expensive cars for consumers. The fact that unclaimed lands have no such restrictions make this an exciting opportunity."
However, scientists on Earth are not pleased with GM's plans.
"We already messed up our atomsphere pretty bad, and the thought that large, inefficient, and dirty American cars on clean, unexplored lands is a travesty," said NASA researcher Stephen Kloss. "We hope they stay away."
Officials from Daimler-Chrysler and Ford could not be reached for comment, but are expected to issue statements tomorrow afternoon.
Said Wagoner: "The Asians are insane. No one wants to cram into a sardine can they call a Japanese car, even if it is efficient."
Sir Humphrey Davy,
Abominated gravy,
He lived in the odium,
Of having discovered Sodium
-- Edmund Clerihew Bentley
Wired also has a story on this article here.
Shh.
OK, if they are viewing the star's light through the atmosphere, and using the differrence to detect the composition of the atmosphere, then it's absorption. And anything that would "block" wavelengths, means the absorption would increase, and provide a reading showing that it would have more sodium, not less. Am I wrong? Maybe I am wrong, but the more I think about it, the more I feel the statement above just doesn't add up. Seems this reporter may be the typical reporter reporting on a subject she may not actually comprehend - and she's the one that's supposed to be informing us!
Of course, leave it to the Star Trek folks to get the distance all wrong.
Big difference there.
That makes them far too hot for life as we know it. Not only would any hypothetical human traveler to this planet die but the planet's intense heat would quickly melt any coins in the person's pockets, the scientists said. Yeah, that's what I worry about when I'm somewhere where (1) I can't breathe and (2) has winds that can rip me to shreds in seconds and (3) has no solid surface for 100's of miles beneath me... Gaah! My quarters!
I can't find my car keys. (no a's in email)
We are all very aware of other Jupiter like planets. In fact we even know where some exist do to some very reasonable astrological data. It seems as though NASA is not investing much time in collecting interesting data as just collecting data itself. My grandmother who is an astronomer had told me about distant planets when I was a kid. What interested her however were the planets close to us, and then traveling there in ways unimaginable to her at that time. I'm a quality kinda guy, when is NASA going to tell us relevant data about the planets in our system, rather than searching for endless data on distant universes.
:)
Peace
It's depressing to think that we can see so far, and will be seeing even further soon enough, while travel is still such an impossible thought. I'm no expert, but I'm sure someone here can tell you that it'd take a group of human explorers 50 generations on a spaceship to reach some of the places we can see. Point being, is the future a place where all sorts of alien worlds (including ours) will be staring at eachother through a telescope with no way of meeting?
Maybe that's for the best though, cause it'd give us a chance to maybe get to know eachother and avoid the possible interplanetary war that might result if we were to just plop down onto someone else's homeworld. Why am I speculating about this as if it were even remotely possible yet? Good question, me. I think I should stop typing now.
Its a good thing that alien atmosphere can't be slashdotted!
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Mm....let's mix that atmosphere with water.
Hey Hemos, that planet is a gas giant. It's not exactly ripe for terraforming. Probably take a lot of water too, dontcha think?
This is just one of the "big" news NASA needs to keep their budget without being cut.
How amusing. I submitted this earlier and got it rejected. oh well.
This link I was using has a nice story attached. Also for more general info about extra solar planets try Jean Schneider's here or its mirror here.
I'm getting funky time outs all over the place, so its hard to tell whether or not things are up. Unless you guys have gotten so good at slashdotting a site that you do it BEFORE a site has been posted. ;)
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
Did anyone see the great BBC documentary on exploring/colonizing Mars that was shown over the weekend? Not only was it great to see some nerd candy on TV, but they raised a couple of good points that I think may be relevant to the current discussion.
The BBC program said that when we finally do colonize mars, we'll probably bring a couple of species with us - mainly some *very* strong strains of plants (wheat i think) that can thrive in the martian soil (when enclosed in a greenhouse of course). And bees - yep, bees, because they're tough, easy to keep, make honey, and can pollinate plants. (I thought it was interesting that they had already scoured the earth for some organisms that they thought could do well there.)
And also, the documentary said that the answer to the question of whether there is life on Mars may not be known for a long long time because on this planet, life hides in corners of the Earth that you'd never expect, like the antarctic, or inside a bubbling geyser. You'd basically have to dissect all of Mars to be sure it's lifeless.
So after watching the documentary and then reading this article, I think it's clear that despite this planet's radically different atmosphere, not only *could* life exist there, but that some species from our world and their world may be more transplantable than you'd think.
X10.com popunder ads also included free of charge
That's the first message we've transmitted to them?! Now we look like a bunch of cheap, evil, manipulative bas... err.. yeah. Nice discovery.
Do you like German cars?
That depends on what is absorbing. If the high-altitude clouds are similar to those on our sky, they cause absorption through scattering. This would mean the absorption is broad-band.
The astronomers are probably comparing spectra taken during the planetary transit and before/after that to derive the planetary spectrum. High-altitude clouds would reduce the planetary spectrum, including any lines.
AFAIK the closest star is in the ball park of 10 light years. The sodium planet was 150 light years. Now, why aren't we looking the closest stars...? We might get more accurate measures there!
Yes, I can read. Maybe I should have phrased the question as "Is it common to find sodium in known planetary atmospheres?" Venus is one... others? Is the sodium indicative of anything? What other substances were found in abundance in this newly discovered atmosphere? I'm an ee undergrad, not an exo-chemist nor astronomer.
;)
Not surprising that the sun contains sodium, considering its mass, heat and numerous nuclear reactions..
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
1) The sodium bit: It's not that the planet's atmosphere is mostly sodium, it's just that sodium is rather easy to detect as compared to other elements (we use it to identify stars all the time). Also, given the spectral coverage of STIS (the spectrograph used to make the measurement), Na was probably the only strong line they could go for in one setting.
2) Why this is a big deal: Yes, we know there are gas giants elsewhere, but that's not the point. It's more of a proof of concept that we can measure the properties of an atmosphere of a planet outside the solar system. Plop a more sensitive instrument up there and you can go for smaller planets....and hopefully find signatures of methane and oxygen...boo-yah.
3) The unexpected bit (from the astronomers point of view) Hubble found it. Hubble's great and all, but spectra is not it's bread and butter. Most of us in the astro community were betting on Keck to find this first since a 10 meter on the ground with larger spectral coverage kicks the crap out of a 2.5 meter (Hubble)
-------- The thought plickens....
Call me crazy, but I think the point could have been made with a better example. Simply saying 'pocket change would instantly melt' or something similiar would have made much more sense. As it is, it sounds like the first explorers to land on the planet are supposed to be people that look like they were just pulled off the street. Seriously, who's going to land on a new planet wearing something that even HAS pockets, and even carrying change in those pockets.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Nice to see that "Hubbled" is a verb now. We need more verbs.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Sites in Europe or USA, both have a French language version. They have a 26page PDF detailing it.
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. --- Albert Einstein
think about it, what will stand out more:
The shadow of a planet which is large enough to reduce the light cast by a star, or the shadow of a planet which orbits at the liquid water temperature range.
The planet which has a confirmed sodium atmosphere is a brown dwarf, (nearly large enough to be a star) extremely hot (2000 F) and close to it's star.
Intially, they only looked at stars like the sun within a few hundred lightyears because they can't detect planets that are too far away.
Now they also look at binary systems and different star types.
Size doesn't matter, it where you put it that counts.
. Mankind evolved from apes, JonKatz is still a baboon.
Anyone else find it funny/ironic that, just 2 days ago in the article Photo of First Extra-Solar Planet?, the top rated posting was one stating that Hubble was incapable of making such a discovery, and that we would need a more advanced telescope:
"To be able to see earth like planets at earth like distances from their parent star, would require a much more advanced telescope than Hubble"
Oh - now that's what I'd call subliminal advertising :o)
Come on, guys, how much did they pay you for that one? And nice job not linking them, as well - no use letting your customer get slashdotted, hmm?
You might just have discovered a valid business model for open source companies! Perhaps we'll have the ExciteMACS and AOLinux in just a years time...
Cheers,Lars
just copy this into
# resolve x10.com as the localhost
127.0.0.1 x10.com
127.0.0.1 ndsex.x10.com
127.0.0.1 ns2.x10.com
127.0.0.1 ns1.x10.com
If you want to get rid of some banner ads, too, you can add this to
# resolve all doubleclick names to the localhost
127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.com
127.0.0.1 doubleclick.com
127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 gd22.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 dcnyadgds1.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 dcnyadgds2.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 annyadgds1.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 annyadgds2.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 uunyadgds1.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 uunyadgds2.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 cwvaadgds1.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 cwvaadgds2.doubleclick.net
You get the idea. Remember, dig and squid are your friends!
In spite of the suggestions and all the tests that I have made, I have not cavato a spider from the hole.
yon giant hubble mirrorscope thingy locating an alien
Andre060
I dub thee...Pretzelus!
A question that has always interested me is "what might an alien life form be like". What is likelyhood of life on another planet being carbon based like life on earth? What might a non-carbon based life form be like? Would we be able to recongnize it as life?
You're forgetting Star Control II. The Slylandro fit the bill perfectly.
Pluto has an atmosphere. Part of the justification for the Pluto-Kuiper Express is that Pluto's atmosphere is frozen solid through most of its orbit. Right now, it's still gaseous, though.
http://encyclozine.com/Space/Planets/Pluto/
-l
Help cure AIDS, cancer, and more. Donate your unused computer time to worldcommunitygrid.org. Join Team Slashdot!
Not because they aren't there, but because they are very hard to detect with current technology (doppler shifts, light curves). The easy planets to find are very large (big doppler shifts) and fast- orbits of months or less.
Oh, wait, the original poster didn't mention "salt", did he?
So who is confused?
The cake is a pie
I used the URL you provided, except I changed "DAY=30" to "DAY=999999".
Do you think that will work (to give me more than 30 days of protection against those dang things)?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Junkbuster is your friend, it runs as a proxy on localhost to filter ads. So you can do more fine-tuning than just hostnames: filter out e.g. all directories named /ads/ on any host.
--
The Cap is nigh. Time to get a fresh new account.
Moderation Totals: Redundant=2, Insightful=1, Informative=1, Overrated=1, Underrated=1, Total=6.
http://www.pc.chemie.uni-siegen.de/pci/versuche/en glish/v44-1-1.html
I am not too educated in this field, but how do scientists know that life cannot be sustained in an environment without water? Is it that the definition of life requires water or at least some form of it? How are they to rule out that life could exist on a planet consisting entirely of gases or some other "uninhabitable" condition? Just curious. =) -Harrison
I like articles that talk about celestial bodies because then I can go view them in celestia.
Again, this is why food labels speak of "sodium" and not "salt" or "MSG".
So your little "you are ignorant" response to the original poster's joke was mistaken. He never mentioned "salt" so there was no confusion of "salt" with sodium.
The cake is a pie
I'll never forget 10th grade chemistry class when the teacher put the Na (metal) in the H2O beaker...not sure if it was his first time or not but the reaction was intense.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I wish I had found this pleasantly OT post earlier...
Anyway, Junkbuster (Stefan Waldherr & Co. edition) development appear to have moved to a new Sourgeforge spot and an improved v3 might be released quite soon.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
I didn't want to do this but its very annoying arguing with non-chemists about chemistry.
People with hypertension are often advised to avoid MSG and other sources of sodium. However, there is no evidence that sodium from MSG, or sources other than salt raises BP or contributes to the development of HTN. Indeed, sodium as salt (NaCl) has been shown to be far more toxic to the body than sodium without the chloride such as MSG, sodium bicarbonate or sodium citrate. In animals the acute lethal dose of MSG that kills 50% (LD 50) of rats and mice (15,000+mg/kg b.wt.) is more than 10 times higher than that of salt. [17] Clearly then research in animals proves that MSG is far less toxic to the body than salt.
The recent DASH-Sodium trial when coupled with other research has demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that Americans should be consuming far less than 1500 mg of sodium daily to reduce problems with high blood pressure.[18] This study showed that an increase in dietary sodium from salt from 1500mg to 2400mg resulted in a significant increase in blood pressure in both normotensive and hypertensive subjects. By contrast, the consumption of up to 120g of MSG (about 18,000mg of sodium) for an extended period of time did not increase blood pressure at all. In fact, this extremely large amount of sodium from MSG resulted in a slight drop in both blood pressure and blood sugar levels and produced no detectable changes in neurological function. [19] Research has shown that when the same amount of sodium is fed as compounds other than salt (i.e. sodium citrate, sodium bicarbonate and MSG) there is no significant increase in blood pressure as occurs with a similar amount of sodium from salt.[20] [21]
A teaspoon of salt has more than four times the sodium content as teaspoon of MSG (2,150 Vs 492mg, respectively). If food that is normally prepared with MSG is prepared without it the flavor and sensory pleasure associated with its consumption will be reduced. To compensate for this loss of flavor enhancement most chefs and food manufacturers would likely compensate for the loss of MSG by the addition of more salt or salt-rich ingredients such as soy sauce. By contrast, if MSG were used in place of salt in the preparation of soups, salad dressings, sauces, French fries, chips, etc. then the amount of salt and sodium these foods contain would be reduced by over 75%. Food manufacturers could use a combination of MSG and monopotassium glutamate in many foods in place of most of the salt and drastically reduce the salt (and sodium) content of many food items.