Scientists Find Water on Extra-solar Planet

amigoro writes "Scientists have, for the first time, conclusively discovered the presence of water vapour in the atmosphere of a planet beyond our Solar System, according to an article appearing in Nature. They made the discovery by analysing the transit of the gas giant HD 189733b across its star, in the Infrared using data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. HD 189733b is a 'hot jupiter', a gas giant that is roughly the size and mass of Jupiter but orbits very close to the star, so no chance of life there."

Comments

Hrrmph!

[fiannaFailMan]

All this talk about water on extra-solar planets. Now if they found a trapdoor, that would be something!

Re:Hrrmph!

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent really isn't a troll.

Hydrogen is fairly common in the universe (90% of its composition), but oxygen isn't except in and near stars (because it is only created by fusion inside the stars and ejected free by supernovas). It makes sense that gas giants will pick up traces of oxygen and then form some water and it makes sense that rocky planets will have the potential to form water since the major constituent of silicious minerals is obviously quartz or SiO2. Any rocky planet that has had some differentiation process would likely have the silicious minerals float to the top like with the Earth and thus have a great potential of having liquid water form if the atmosphere could support it. Mercury, Venus, and Mars are great examples of places where the atmosphere could not support liquid water. On one side if do not have a powerful enough geomagnetic field, the solar wind will strip the atmosphere leaving the surface bare like Mercury and Mars. On the other side, if you gas the atmosphere too much with CO2 from volcanoes, the atmosphere will superheat allowing the water vapour to rise and be broken up by UV light like on Venus. So there is a sweet spot where the Earth exists to have a rocky planet with a strong enough geomagnetic field and enough gassing by volcanoes to support the atmosphere.

hmm

[User 956]

Scientists Find Water on Extra-solar Planet

The only extra solar planet I know of is Pluto, and we've already had that discussion.

no change of life like us

[QuantumG]

The arrogance of thinking that we're the only possible form of life is ludicrous.

Re:no change of life like us

[Farmer Tim]

There can be a species of friendly gas bags

Unlike the species of evil gas bags we keep electing...

Re:no change of life like us

[bhiestand]

I'm surprised parent got modded down. There is an enormous amount of evidence to imply lack of extraterrestrial life. Lack of radio waves is the major one, for me, and no one has explained this so far.

I don't even think that's good evidence for a lack of life. Just rounding here, but let's say humanity has been using radio waves for 100 years. 100 years from now we may well be using some other form of communication entirely. Of course I don't know what it could be, but nobody using smoke signals would've guessed radio waves would be the next big thing. So if, as a planet, we're only using detectably artificial radio waves for 200 years of the 4+ billion years the earth has existed and hundreds of millions of years that life has existed, and other planets develop in a very similar way, we're now looking for a stray quark in a haystack instead of a needle in a very large haystack. Hell, it's not very likely that the first extraterrestrial life we detect will be within 200 years of us in terms of technological advancement.

Absent an amazing discovery of microbial bacteria or fossils on mars or titan, I think it's very likely that our first indication of life will be the discovery of a planet with a stable oxygen/nitrogen/CO2 atmosphere like our own.

Assuming that all life and civilizations evolve at about the same rate, and all life eventually leads to intelligent life, we're likely to find millions of Alien Life Forms (ALFs) before we find any that are within a few hundred years of us in technology. Why is any more explanation needed?

"no chance of life there"

[MutantEnemy]

You mean no chance of life as we know it...

Re:"no chance of life there"

[Bad D.N.A.]

Dude... Your preaching to the choir.

Some miscellaneous information:

[TripMaster Monkey]

HD 189733b is a gas giant planet with 1.15 times the mass of Jupiter and 1.26 its diameter. It orbits its primary in only 2.219 days and in a distance of 0.0313 AU. This is one of the closest planet-star systems known. The planet's surface temperature is 920 kelvin on the poles and 1220 kelvin on the bright side.

No Chance Of Life?!?! WTF?

[ThePopeLayton]

so no chance of life there.

This is a pretty bold statement. Scientist predicted that life couldn't survive in a number of environments on earth, yet it has been found in each one:

1- In lakes frozen hundreds of meters down in antarctica
2- In the dept of the ocean where NO light permeates
3- Next to Volcanic openings in the earths crust were tempuratues are well over 800 degress c
4- In the highly acidic and poisionus ponds in Yellowstone National Park

I am sure that there are more but I can't think of any.

So for some scientist to say that there can't be life, I just have to role my eyes. One thing that I have learned about life is that life will find away. So just because we can't concieve of the possible forms that life might take its a little presumputous for us to assume that it can't exist.

Earth is a small speck in the universe, it doesn't matter if you believe in God or not but to assume that life, as we know it on this planet, is the only form and location of life in the universe is a very ignorant view point.

I am of the firm conviction that as soon as we have the technology to explores these remote and hostile locations we will find things that we haven't even dreamed could exist.

So to get off my little soapbox here; if there is water there is probably life, and just because the conditions on the planet don't fit are current formula for life doesn't mean that our formula is correct.

Re:No Chance Of Life?!?! WTF?

[QuantumG]

Yup, cause we really explored the Moon. After all, we landed on 5 or 6 random positions on the equator, stayed there for an hour or two and picked up some rocks. Planetoid explored!

Mars, we've not even gone to. We've got some rock inspecting toys up there, but that's about it.

Venus, we've never been to there either. Our probes have sampled the atmosphere, that's about it. We still have no idea why it has such a strange rotation.

We have absolutely no credible statement to make about the prevalence of life in the solar system, let alone the universe. But hey, anonymous person on Slashdot, thanks setting us straight.