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First Exoplanet Atmospheres Analyzed
deblau writes "NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has captured for the first time enough light from planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets, to identify signatures of individual molecules in their atmospheres. The landmark achievement is a significant step toward being able to detect possible life on rocky exoplanets and comes years before astronomers had anticipated."
Shit! They are all polluted also.
Table-ized A.I.
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has captured for the first time enough light from planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets, to identify signatures of individual molecules in their atmospheres.
Jesus. If they can see that far out, imagine what they can see when they look straight down.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
they just have to replace pluto as a planet so they dont have to change every textbook ever made
That newly-arrived large ominous black orb with the giant satellite dish embedded in it may qualify.
Table-ized A.I.
... will be when we discover a planet with a huge hole in its ozone layer? :P
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
What will be really interesting will be to see how accurate their atmospheric analysis will be a year from now. In the article they mentioned finding tiny particles of "silicates in the atmosphere". Sounds a like a lot of speculation as to what the actual data could represent.
I've done the math, I know the odds, but I'm still disappointed when I don't win the lottery.
I think it is amazing how they can get the spectrum of the planet by substracting the spectrums of both using a formula like:
planet = (star + planet) - star
In other words, take the spectrum of both and compare it to the spectrum of the star when the planet is behind the star.
It seems to me the star's spectra would be so strong as to wash out anything from the planet. However, maybe the specific chemical signatures they are looking for are weak in the star. For example, stars are probably too hot for a water line. Water would probably be converted into fundimental elements by the star.
Table-ized A.I.
Our exoplanetary overlords don't want our water. What would a sentient cloud of silicon crystals want with H2O? They are just trying to figure out if the silicon chips of our planet are willing to sell a few of their pet waterbags. (that's us)
We are all just people.
All the extra solar planets that have been found so far are large gas giant type planets.
Our telescopes aren't good enough (yet) to detect small earth size rocky planets.
While spectographic analysis of these planets atmosphere is interesting, it does not give us information about the possiblity of life (as we know it, Jim) since these aren't the places we would find life in this solar system either. Maybe these other planetary systems do include rocky planets, or moons (like titan and europa ) that could be candidates for some form of life, but we wouldn't find that out by looking at the atmospheres of JUpiter and Saturn
This textbook contains material on the planet Pluto. Classification of Pluto as planet is a theory, not a fact. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.
That's not NASA's fault. That's the fault of greedy, whorish, self-serving Congressmen who, in place of a sense of vision and wonder, hold their proverbial genitals in their hands making idiotic demands upon the agency before they'll vote on funding. The ISS that was originally proposed would have been quite something. A space shuttle that actually followed the initial requirements would have been incredible. But by the time it was all filtered through the worthless filth that inhabits Washington, we were left with a pack of crap.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I'm sorry, but they are not detecting the signatures of INDIVIDUAL MOLECULES. Try "individual compounds".
I really think that the skills needed to analyze a distant planets atmosphere are important. But it doesn't matter what they discover, the information that the telescopes gather is billions of years old and is likely completely to be worthless for the purposes of planning exploration. It is still cool though.
load "$",8,1
Professor Farnsworth: Now, we all know telescopes allow us to see distant objects. But what if we want to smell distant objects? Well, now we can! Thanks to my new invention: the Smelloscope. The odor travels past this coffee stain here, around the olive pit, and into this cigar burn. And this appears to be a doodle of myself as a cowboy. But the Smelloscope is brilliant, I tell you! Think of the astronomical odors you'll smell, thanks to me.
This is great research and all, but I would think that the people at Spitzer would be a lot more cognizant and courteous to their colleagues and not inflate their claims of priority. A team already analyzed the atmosphere of a transiting exoplanet using STIS on Hubble. It's a different situation (most exoplanets don't transit, after all), but they HST team did this around five YEARS ago. I remember hearing talks about it at the time, it was a big deal. Surely the Spitzer team should have known about this?
It is beautiful to read about such a scientific achievement, the technology involved and the vision of the scientists that implement it. From the results obtained an article is written that appeals to "the man in the street" and light-years are converted into xx trillion miles. After that you get to the comment section and this is just depressing. We need to return to proper science articles even in the poplar press and general web sites and if some people are not able to follow they have a choice: get informed or stay ignorant.
This is more true than probably most slashdotters realize. Ozone is the only chemical indicator of life that we can reliably detect across long distances.
Ozone, unlike oxygen itself, has a strong absorption spectrum in the infrared wavelengths. A space-based infrared telescope (like Spitzer, but better) is exactly the right tool for detecting the presence of ozone. (A ground based telescope will not do, since infrared is absorbed by the atmosphere.) Finding ozone on a planet is just like finding oxygen -- the two compounds are so closely related that you can't have one without the other. And oxygen is a very volatile compound that reacts with almost anything else if you leave it alone. The only way for a planet to have free floating oxygen is if something on the planet is producing it.
As far as we know, the only way to sustain an oxygen atmosphere on a planetary scale is with life. So, yes, finding ozone on a distant planet would be a very exciting discovery indeed.
We now are finding lots of extra-solar planets, and have moved on to analzying some of their atmospheres. Is SETI really a "religion"?
Here are the informations missing from TFS :
Two extrasolar gas giant upper atmospheres were observed by the Spitzer infrared sprectrometer. It revealed mainly silicate dust and no water. That bewildered scientists who take for granted that such planets contain a high quantity of water. They extrapolate that it must be present under the dust layer.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Well, not necessarily. Oxygen (and thus ozone) can be produced in macroscopic scales abiotically. Some classes of water worlds should do this, for example. They don't have a surface that wants to oxidize, and if they're massive enough, they'll hold onto an oxygen atmosphere produced through photochemical means. Some moons in our solar system, like Europa, have tenuous oxygen atmospheres.
Likewise, other chemicals that we're not used to would probably still scream out "life" to us. What if you saw an atmosphere rich in fluorine? That's even more reactive than oxygen. Might seem reasonable to consider that a marker of life -- just not LAWKI. Might not mean anything; there's a lot of potential inorganic that we don't know about.
What about surface features instead of atmospheric ones? Leaves tend to reflect strongly in the 700-750 nm range. What if we have a surface that has sharp spectral features in that range? Could be an indicator. Might not be. What if there were sharp spectral signatures in other ranges that don't correspond to minerals that we'd expect to be on the surface? Perhaps there are lifeforms with different biochemistry. Perhaps it's just deposits of a mineral that we don't expect to be there.
There are plenty of other potential biosignatures, and it's basically going to take having multiple biosignatures to make a compelling case for life.
"Who the hell is Nietzche? It's a question stupid people are asking." -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"