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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."
1) water maser emissions? Geez, what's next, they can smell it from here?
2) how far away are these planets? Are they far enough away that by the time these "maser emissions" get to us that the water is gone?
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 ;)
Those Italians are so fond of their wansy pansy "aqua minerale" and stupid diet food. Give
that R&D money to our Irish astronomers and they will find planets with beer and whiskey.
Looks a little like Jupiter, if you ask me ....
The ice on Mars and Europa is more than like frozen ammonia, not water.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
note: the Italian team was unable to find signs of interstellar beer, which signifies that there is indeed no intelligent life out there.
Eh wrong. Keep looking for at all the planets you can for signs of life. That's the fastest way to get a look at new propulsion systems. Here's my reasoning:
When we find them, beam them transmissions of Britney Spears Pepsi Commericals, Back Street Boys, and American Idol. They'll use their fancy propulsion systems to come over here to say hi...
Extra bonus, we'll probably get to see their fancy ray guns shortly their after as they wipe us from the slate of universal existence...
Yet another reason for "And don't forget to bring a towel!"
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
That is not true, there is strong evidence that Water exists at the poles of Mars and on Europa. In fact, there is evidence that water exists at the poles of the Moon, and Mercury as well.
But it frustrates me that so many scientists always seem to believe that water in a liquid form is a necessity of life. Just because it was required in our form of life doesn't mean that there aren't silicon-based life forms out there, or bacteria that thrive in environments other than H20.
I drink to prepare for a fight; tonight I'm very prepared. -Soda Popinksi
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Give that R&D money to our Irish astronomers and they will find planets with beer and whiskey.
I have no idea how you go about finding planets equipped with beer and whisky but I'm willing to give it a go.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
Read Rare Earth, it shows that water has been found on some distant planets (or variations thereof). My personal take is that life is out there, but in extremaphile form (simple life forms that can exist in extremely hot/cold environments, live off sulfur, etc...)
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!!!!
Well if you drink too much, you either fall flat on your face, staring into a planet;
That's how I found planet Earth! Don't quite remember where I came from... I do remember that planets smell kind of funny. And they have bits of sausage on them. And cucumber. Definately cucumber. Well known scientific fact.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
This is atmospheric water, not surface water that they have, presumably, found. Mars has only a tiny bit of water in its atmosphere, just 210 parts per million. Europa has practially no atmosphere at all, just a tenuous one of oxygen at 1e-11 bar of pressure. If we find a planet with more water in its atmosphere than Mars or Europa, it will be at least the second most watery planet we know of!
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
Does anyone really grok in fullness the implications of water on another planet?
they know that, its just we have a better clue on what a carbon based life form will need, so we look for that.
If a silicon based life form beamed us a message, we wouldn't ignore it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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
Ie; What the hell is a maser? What does it emit? Am I the only one reading CNN that isn't an astrophysisist?
A "maser" is the microwave equivalent of a laser, operating on rotational energy states instead of vibrational states or electron shell jumps. Ammonia is what was used in the first maser built on earth, but other chemicals work too.
Maser action occurs naturally under various conditions. The one I remember reading about was maser emissions from the outer envelopes of (if I recall correctly) red giant stars, as these are cool enough to have molecular matter instead of plasma in the outermost layers.
Detection of a water maser in a distant star system definitely indicates that water is there. Whether it's in the upper atmospheres of planets or just in the outer layers of the host star is another question.
It's a misdirection so they can steal your arctic circle candy!
"But it frustrates me that so many scientists always seem to believe that water in a liquid form is a necessity of life."
...
Scientists do not have to believe anything that was not proven yet. Put out a theory that can be tested and maybe then you'll have the right to get frustrated with people who always require some kind of evidence to exist before they start believing in things that they have not seen or proven theoretically.
Water is the best solvent known to our kind that stays liquid between degrees 0C and 100C at ground atmospheric pressure and protected by layer of ozone from various types of radiation from being broken down into oxygen and hydrogen by high energy elements.
There are other types of chemicals that can become solvents: Ammonia, for example melts at negative 77C and boils at negative 33.5C So it is not impossible to use ammonia as a solvent at lower temperatures to do the same things water does at our temperatures. However, notice that with ammonia as a solvent, the actual energy in the system is much lower than in the system at higher temperatures. Thus the chemical reactions will happen much slower if ammonia is used as a solvent at lower temperatures. On the other hand, at higher temperatures some forms of liquid metal can be used as solvents, the problem with those is that at such temperatures things burn. Of-course here comes silicon. Silicon is known to be almost as good at creating long chains as carbon, but not exactly as good. In nature long carbon chains are much more prevalent than long silicon chains, in space we find alcohol molecules - a mix of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon atoms. B.T.W. Carbon is a much more common element in the universe than silicon:
4 1H --> 4He.
3 4He --> 12C.
12C + 4He --> 16O.
12C + 12C --> 24Mg.
etc. making 28Si, 32S,
This is the life of main sequence star, where every next stage is less possible and is much shorter than the previous one and every next stage requires more energy (pressure-temperature) to continue the thermonuclear reactions going. Carbon in these reactions are found much earlier than silicon thus there is more carbon in the universe than there is silicon.
Anyway, my point is that there is no reason to get frustrated with scientists. The science will explain everything to us in due time.
Cheers.
You can't handle the truth.
But it frustrates me that so many scientists always seem to believe that water in a liquid form is a necessity of life. Just because it was required in our form of life doesn't mean that there aren't silicon-based life forms out there, or bacteria that thrive in environments other than H20.
It turns out that water has a number of unusual properties that makes it very friendly to life compared to most other substances.
Among other things, it's a wonderful solvent, and water ice is less dense than liquid water (meaning that a pond freezes _over_, leaving habitable liquid water underneath, instead of freezing solid from the bottom up).
While you can make a strong argument for life being _possible_ in other media, it certainly seems to be most _likely_ to occur in a water-based environment.
Also, finding a world that can support water-based life would be one hell of a PR boost, as it makes the general public consider the possibility of human colonies there (practical or not). An environment habitable to silicate bugs doesn't quite grab the cultural imagination the same way.
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.
What the hell is a maser? Microwave Amplification by Stimulation Emission of Radiation.
What does it emit? Photons. Actually, if you don't know which particle some phenomenon emits, answering "photons" gives you the best chance to be right.
Am I the only one reading CNN that isn't an astrophysisist? Probably. This is Slashdot. Those of us who do not hold a degree in astrophysics could, if we wanted to, but then again we don't and couldn't care less, but that has never kept our mouths shut about anything, has it? Just assume every post starts with a virtual IANAA, except were noticed otherwise.
CNN really sucks about things like this. The New Scientist article is much better.
The books posit life evolving on the surface of a neutron star. Some of the consequences include an almost unimaginable difference in timescales - a few minutes in our perception are equivalent to centuries of time on the surface of the neutron star, and the very process of studying the evolving intelligent life their ends up motivating that life's progress into high technology and space travel. I won't give away much more of the books, but I'll suggest it as some of the best Mind Candy I've read in a while.
Main Entry: maser
Pronunciation: 'mA-z&r
Function: noun
Etymology: microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation
Date: 1955
: a device or object that emits coherent microwave radiation produced by the natural oscillations of atoms or molecules between energy levels
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
I just love these information packed articles that Slashdot points to.
Come'on! If your going to put up a topic that is worthy of Slashdot, atleast refer to a story that actually has more information than the subject line!
Linux O Muerte!
The silicon based life argument is betting a bit old. Silicon has similar properties to carbon but it forms very weak bonds and very short chains. The bonds silicon makes aren't going to stand up to much meaning you need extraordinarily extreme conditions for that type of life to survive but with those sort of extremes the sort of processes you could catalyze the formation of life are likely too extreme for said life to even form.
Bacteria surviving without water is a much more plausible and likely scenario. Bacteria can be found just about anywhere which is why is makes it a rather fruitless exercise to go hunting around for it. It probably abounds in the most likely and unlikely of places. Pointing out somewhere that can possibly support microbial life not needing water isn't as impressive as finding a place that could support multicellular life on a large scale. You could throw a space rock and hit a bunch of places that will support bacteria, not so with multicellular and more complex lifeforms which is what we're interested in.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Namely because so far we don't have the technology to BUILD those propulsion systems and we aren't likely to pull it out of our asses in the next 50 years. So we might as well spend time looking for places to go now so that in 100 years or so, when and IF we find a way to travel vast distances within out lifetimes, then we will have a nice set of targets to explore.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
There are reportedly 100 plus "extrasolar" planets now listed somewhere. The jury is also still out on the sunspot theory for that recent find. The original finders are reportedly investigating further and don't agree with "sunpots." Right at the moment I think the Italian announcement may be the ONLY disucssion regarding an extrasolar planet that is using apparently direct evidence. The majority of these planets are identified indirectly through the effects they reportedly have on their respective stars.
Presently the most likely kind of planet that would be detected beyond the solar system will be very large and likely have an excentric orbit, or else orbit very close to the parent star. This is merely a limitation imposed by the available methods for finding them, which are best suited for finding massive planets orbiting relatively small stars. Another few years and astronomers may be imaging or otherwise detecting smaller, earthlike planets, but not yet.
I think the single most important lesson that the detection of all these new planets provides is directed to the nature of our own system. Initially we knew the sun was pretty average as stars go. The most reasonable view would be that statistically the solar system as a whole was likely to be pretty average as well, but we were stuck with a sample of one, which is not very helpful since we live here. The place is important to us, but is it unique in the universe or boringly typical? Physically it is now begining to look as if our home system is very average. This implies interesting things about the occurrence of life in the universe, but offers a worrisome view of the presence or absence of intelligence.
Life is likely to be common. The more we know about it, the more it appears that life might be nearly inevitable and that at least bacterial-level life might be common, an average trait of average solar systems. For instance, the jury is still out on Mars, but each new piece of evidence seems to make it more possible, if not yet probable that bacteria-like forms may live or have lived there. The recent discussion about the nature of apparent biogenic magnetite in Martian meteorites, is interesting and suggestive, though non-life-based processes that are non-existent, or very, very uncommon, on earth still cannot be ruled out. However, if two local planets do indeed prove to have indigenous life, and if as the mounting data suggests, planets are common, then there is also a mounting likelihood that life is common throughout the universe. The flip side though is that the absence of evidence of other intelligence out there may mean that in the longer run, intelligence has yet to prove adaptive for life forms.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
I just want to let you know, that most of what you said went through one hemisphere and out the other - however, since you started stating chemical formulas, i'm going to stand here and look impressed.
Lalande 21185: No paper reporting a planet around this star has yet been published, although there was a "SORTA KINDA" statement made about 5 years ago.
Eps Eri: Is a maybe planet. See here
The planets around Upsilon Andromedae are however not in question. But it is not clear from the article that they are detecting masers on each (or any) of the planets. They should be able to detect clear periodic doppler signals as each of the planets orbits.
It's embarassing to be moderated to 5 when Christopher Thomas and roman_mir gave more coherent, similar ideas that scored lower. Read theirs as well.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
Did they not want to tell us what systems these were, because they are afraid that we will travel there first?
We're trying to find out if there's life outside of the planet Earth. How do we plan on doing that?
Yes, we look for the telltale signs of a planet similar to our own. What if a planet has an oxygen atmosphere? What if it has water? What if the temperature was suitable for people like us?
But then what? I suppose we'll send radio waves there, hoping that there's someone developed enough that will hear us out, and send something back. Fantastic.
But what if there isn't life like that there? What if there's mass levels of forests, or oceans filled with derivatives of fish? What if there's only single celled life there, or creatures that wrap around the celebral cortex like in Star Trek 2?
How do we plan to prove that there's life there? I've heard that one looks for signs of methane (I don't exactly know why), or something else along that manner. But would anything like that be conclusive? Doubtful.
I seriously doubt we'd find anything using these methods, especially considering that we're limiting ourselves to planets like our own. Life, on the smallest scales, can exist anywhere. I presume the question here is, can it be made anywhere?
The only way to find out is to go there. Too bad that by doing so we'd be contaminating the atmosphere with bacteria of our own. Oh well. The mystery lives on.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
a few minutes in our perception are equivalent to centuries of time on the surface of the neutron star
You have this backwards. Relativity tells us that a few minutes in a powerful gravitational field (such as a neutron star), would be centuries by our standards.
Actually, you're both right.
Gravitational time dilation makes time pass more slowly on the surface of a neutron star.
However, nuclear reactions are many, many orders of magnitude faster than chemical reactions.
The net result is that despite being at the bottom of a powerful gravity well, neutron star life, if it could exist, would think and evolve much, much faster than the biological life observing it.
Given that neutron stars are typically as old as most other celestial objects, a corollary is that if life on neutron stars is possible at all, it almost certainly exists and has evolved to any final stable state it's going to on every star capable of supporting it at all.
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
Actually, it does form naturally - it's oxygen atmospheres that are relatively rare.
Most atmospheres start off as "reducing" atmospheres rich in hydrogen, as hydrogen is abundantly available in newborn star systems. Oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon are bound up as water, ammonia, and methane (leftover molecular hydrogen boils off from anything smaller than a gas giant).
However if you spend all of your time looking for a form of life you can only have wild theories about you're going to miss all the mundane forms which is analguous to the life on Earth. There may be crazy and varied forms of life based on all sorts of things but there's no way to know of looking for them. Looking for carbon based life is much easier because we can look for anything remotely smiliar to our planet.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.