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Signs Of Water Found On Distant Planets
nphillips writes "According to this article at CNN, an Italian team has found evidence of water on three planetary systems. The team used a 32-meter radio telescope to search for water maser emissions, telltale microwaves which could indicate water in a planet's atmosphere when it is bathed in the infrared light of its star."
Its cool they found a method for finding water on other planets, but its no surprise that their is water, what earth was the only planet in the universe to be hit by a comet ;)
Most of what we know about the universe has been found out right here on Earth by analyzing light spectra. The "what's the point if we can't go there" attitude isn't beneficial to anyone. The more information we have, the more comprehensive our theories about the universe will be.
"We shall party like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean." - HedonismBot
in the universe combined in a gravitational well, hydrogen and oxygen. Given that we've found water on tens of our solar system objects (Mars, comets, Europa, etc), the only surprising thing would be to not find water in another solar system.
A. Rightmann
Another CNN 'science' article about some guy who *MAY* have found something that *COULD* be important. *POSSIBLE* *MAYBE* *SORTA* *KINDA*
They're always so eager to publish anything by anyone in a lab coat who's in need of funding.
And of course there's nothing informative to explain what the story means.
Ie; What the hell is a maser? What does it emit? Am I the only one reading CNN that isn't an astrophysisist?
And inevitably, a few days later, they publish a 'follow-up' article which retracts everything they said. "Meteor to hit earth in 3 days!" "Another Moon Found" "Meteor actually not going to hit earth" "Moon is really dog-doo on a stick"
Meh.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
people believe what they see and know, as of now our current science tells us that life=water as we don't know of another chemical that's stable enofe to support life, I think a better search for life involves ones that look for methane as it rarely forms naturally and large enofe amounts to be detected from earth is a strong indicator of life
But it frustrates me that so many scientists always seem to believe that water in a liquid form is a necessity of life.
Of course I know nothing about what is necessary for life. But water is a really unique chemical. Because of the hydrogen bridges, many salts dissolve (ionize) very easily in water, and not in other chemicals.If you can't ionize salts, there is a large number of elements that you just can't use as a primitive life form because it'll remain rock. It's not so unreasonable to assume that complex life is very unlikely without water.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
I would say that is a pretty direct detection, as Charbonneau et al. have even detected sodium in the atmosphere of that planet.
The issue you are talking about concerns one star out of close to a hundred with planet candidates. Don't be so quick to dismiss some very nice work that people (several independent groups) have been doing for years now. You start to sound like a crank
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?