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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.
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".
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."
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"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.
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.
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.