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Alien Atmosphere Hubbled

Posted by Hemos on from the water-+-Na-=-fun dept.

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.

5 of 230 comments (clear)

  1. Drake Equation by gandalf_grey · · Score: 5, Interesting
    What effects have the recent (relatively) discoveries of extra-solar planets, and now atmospheres, done to change the results that one can get from the drake equation?

    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?

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    Mmmmmmm. Floor pie!
  2. wtf? by deglr6328 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

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    - "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
  3. Re:Telescopes and spaceships by Sarcasmooo! · · Score: 5, Funny

    What if this sort of telescope technology becomes commonplace, and someone uses it to shoot laserpointers at alien worlds? They would be so annoyed that they would hate us forever. We would be doomed.

  4. Re:A sodium atmosphear?? by TandyMasterControl · · Score: 5, Funny
    We can also safely eliminate Planet HD234562345 as the long sought lair of Pulvetton's Giant Space Slug.

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    Johnny Quest has two Daddies.
  5. A few things... by joh3n · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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)

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    -------- The thought plickens....