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Naphthalene Found In Outer Space
Adam Korbitz writes with an excerpt from his blog on an exciting discovery in space: "A team of researchers led by Spanish scientists has published their discovery of the complex molecule naphthalene in an interstellar star-forming cloud, indicating many prebiotic organic molecules necessary for life as we know it could have been present when our own solar system formed. According to the new research — published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters — the naphthalene molecules were discovered 700 light-years from Earth in a star-forming region of the constellation Perseus, in the direction of the star Cernis 52."
With one of these.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
They found the absorption spectrum of the naphthalene cation in the light. \
""We have detected the presence of the naphthalene cation in a cloud of interstellar matter located 700 lightyears from the Earth", says IAC researcher Susana Iglesias Groth."
Sorry, in my hurry I was wrong again. These articles cover the astronomical uses of spectroscopy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_spectroscopy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_spectrum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_spectrum
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
napthalene is a simple aromatic hydrocarbon, basically one benzene ring fused with another. molecular formula C10H8. hydrocarbons can be cracked under certain conditions to produce various aromatic hydrocarbons so finding it in space could be fairly common if there are hydrocarbons near a source capable of cracking them.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I've always wondered why the elderly are so keen on mothballs. Were there more moths around 75 years ago?
Natural fibers are more susceptible to them than synthetics, which we use more of now.
Table-ized A.I.
For those not familiar with the field of abiogenesis, it is a truly remarkable field of study. The search for the first origin of life on our planet, or rather when organic matter achieved 'life' as we understand it.
I find it quite interesting personally, how the primordial sludge brewed into our very first ancestor.
Excelsior!!
I am open source, and Linux baby!
When a electron leaves an excited state it emits a photon. Every element and molecule has a unique set of frequencies for these transfers. So by looking at the light coming off of it, you can figure out whats in it. Its called spectroscopy. If in high school chemistry you ever burned chemicals and used a cardboard thing over your eye to see lines, you've got the basic idea.
The same observatory reported the same thing 15 years ago: www.iac.es/folleto/research/preprints/files/PP08019.pdf
"And we're going to KEEP discovering it until you get it right!"
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B