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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!
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!"
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
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!
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)
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.
We certainly are. The only planets in our own Solar System that lack atmospheres are Mercury and Pluto, assuming you're among those that still count Pluto as a planet and not a gargantuan comet.
If you mean other planetary systems, then we have no data to say one way or another. We have no techniques for detecting extra-Solar planets smaller than Jupiter.
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.
If by "Earth type planet" you mean a relatively small rocky body rather than a gas giant, you're probably right. If you mean a planet capable of supporting life as we know it, then it is a bit of a stretch, at least in the planetary systems we've actually observed. If Jupiter were much closer to the Sun than it is, conditions on Earth would be far different than they are -- that is, if Earth existed at all. It may well be that it was Jupiter's influence that prevented a planet from forming where the asteroid belt is now. The Jupiter-like planets we've seen in other systems are generally far closer to the Sun than Jupiter is. No terrestrial planets are likely to exist inside their orbits. Outside their orbits it would be too cold for liquid water to exist.
And the brethren went away edified.
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. ;)
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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.
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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....
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
There's a better article in nytimes.com (registration required). The Hubble's spectrograph is detecting tiny traces of sodium in the planet's atmosphere as it transits between the star (its sun) and us. They set it to look for sodium, because that has the strongest spectrum lines of any element. The article didn't say, but I think these must be absorption lines where the starlight shines through the atmosphere of the planet, around the edges as it transits. I would assume it is ionic sodium -- you just plain don't find sodium in any other form.
The planet is Jupiter-sized, and close to it's sun, so the atmosphere is hot enough to melt copper. Not a good place to visit... But with the present methods for detecting extra-solar planets, any we can spot will be too big and too hot.
Mostly, planets are detected because their mass as they orbit makes the star jiggle just a little (the star and the planet orbit the common center of gravity -- which is still somewhere inside the star, but not the exact middle). The stars motion doppler shifts it's light, and so there is a periodic shift in the star's spectrogram. The bigger the planet is and the closer to the star, the more jiggle -- someone in another solar system looking at ours with instruments of similar capability wouldn't detect Earth because it's too small, and might miss Jupiter because it's orbit is too wide and slow.
This particular planet was detected by a different method; it happens that the planet's orbit causes it to transit between the star and Earth, blocking a small part of the star's light. If the planet is big enough, this drop in the star's intensity is detectable. But such an orbital alignment must be something like a one in a million shot...
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.