Slashdot Mirror
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."
At first I thought it said Neanderthal.
This would be so much cooler then Naphtalene.
My first thought was something along these lines.
Exactly how did he get out there?
I suspected it was a crude version of this... http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002387.html
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Humor attempted, seems failed.
Indeed. I wasn't even sure if you were kidding...I was about to mention that Spectroscopy can be done just fine at a distance...
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
Great. Now you need to explain why by accident vast quantities of the organic material hydrocarbons were converted to napthalene in sufficient quantity to be detected at a range of 400 lightyears, and then explain how this event is locally unique so that it didn't happen in every corner of the universe. Good luck with that. May I offer you a noodle? You need only let it touch you to feel its effects.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
If you don't know the difference between microbes and molecules, you should probably go read some science books.
This just proofs that Eega Beeva is out there, somewhere...
Unless I'm misreading your comment, you're mistaking observed rate for overall chance.
Ah, but what's the chance of intelligent life evolving?