First Organic Molecules Found on Alien World

Galactic_grub writes "The detection of planet HD 189733b is in some ways just another small victory for extra-solar planetary science. It is too hot for there to be anything 'alive'. Just the same, somewhere on the planet are trace amounts of the gas methane. The fact that the element was detected at all offers hope for understanding future discoveries of Earth-like worlds, says NewScientistSpace. Researchers from Caltech and University College London used the Hubble Space Telescope to peer at the planet and examined spectral signature of starlight filtered by the planet's atmosphere, to identify different chemicals. 'The authors suggest that some ill-understood chemical process might be responsible, either concentrating the methane in cooler parts of the atmosphere, or generating extra methane directly. Alternatively, the methane might simply mean that the planet happens to be very rich in carbon.'"

Comments

Unfortunately, not a smoking gun...

[TripMaster Monkey]

Methane can be formed by inorganic processes...although how enough of it could be formed to be detectable to us way over here is an intriguing question.

Also, the planet is around 700 degrees Celsius...why are we so sure this completely precludes the possibility of life?

Misleading

[Webs 101]

The surprising thing here isn't that the astronomers discovered methane on a planet. Heck, Uranus is full of the stuff and other gas giants have it as well.

It's not surprising to find methane on an extrasolar planet. What is different about this is, to QTFA:

"Initially, that is surprising," says Sara Seager of MIT in Cambridge, US, who was not involved in the study. Because HD 189733b orbits very close to its parent star - just 10% of Mercury's distance from the Sun, it is very hot, with atmospheric temperatures of about 700 Celsius. "When the temperature is this high, the dominant form of carbon should be carbon monoxide, not methane," says Seager.