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Carbon Dioxide and Water Found On Exoplanet
Off the Rails writes "The BBC reports that evidence has been found for both water vapour and carbon dioxide on a planet 63 light years away. The planet is a 'hot Jupiter' with a surface temperature of 1173K and an orbital period of just 53 hours. The gases were found spectroscopically once its orbit had been deduced from observation. NASA hailed the news as proof that Kepler will be able to do its job of finding planets capable of supporting life." Wikipedia also has an entry on the planet, dubbed HD 189733b.
I for one welcome our new 1173 Kelvin alien overlords!
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Seriously?
My preferred name is frazz, but someone keeps taking it. If you see him, tell him I said hi.
NASA hailed the news as proof that Kepler will be able to do its job of finding planets capable of supporting life.
So the announcement about the discovery of a planet not capable of supporting life... is proof that Hubble's replacement will be able to find planets that will support life?
Well, that's 1,651.73 Fahrenheit/899.85 Celsius according to Google. Almost cozy.
1175 K = 902 C = 1655.6 F
Really damn hot.
"That's LORD Kelvin to you!" - Adam Savage
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
NASA hailed the news as proof that Kepler will be able to do its job of finding planets capable of supporting life.
I guess all you need to support life these days is water vapor and carbon dioxide. Never mind that the planet is hotter than the surface of some stars.
Yeah, it is. Almost as hot as Bakersfield in August, even.
This ain't rocket surgery.
"NASA hailed the news as proof that Kepler will be able to do its job of finding planets capable of supporting life."
Seeing as it can only seem to spot super massive planets the size of Jupiter or larger, this will likely not help one whit.
Is it a good first step? Sure.
So there is water vapor and CO2? Big deal. It is also over 1000 degrees K, a bit hot no? It is also not solid, sometimes a problem. It is also frickin huge, so unless you want to transform yourself into a diamond due to being crushed by unbelievable pressures, you may want to look else where.
To my understanding (which may be limited) this stuff is figured out by observing the "wobble" of light from a star. This is apparently caused by small gravitational effects caused by planetary bodies. How they get composition I am not entirely sure. However it seems that unless your planetary body is of a significant mass, the "wobble" isn't as easily seen. Which is why we are getting news about a super massive hot Jupiter being proof that a technology will fulfill its roll in finding planets suitable for life.
Perhaps they mean to do it by subtraction. Simply identify all those that are unsuitable, subtract that from the total, and what you are left are bountiful earth like paradises with green amazon women.
"Although they are keen to stress the planet is far too hot to support life, they say the finding represents an important proof of concept, showing that it is possible to detect CO2 in the atmospheres of distant planets orbiting other stars, and that the same method could be used to look at planets which might support life."
Kepler will be a small telescope (about 1 meter) in orbit, with the sole mission of looking at a few fixed areas on the sky and searching for planets by the transit method: take thousands of pictures and look for stars which become dimmer for a few hours due to a planet crossing their disks. This small mission will launch in spring 2009 and is NOT a replacement for HST.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is Hubble's replacement. It will be much larger (with a mirror around 6.5 meters in diameter) and carry out many, many different types of observations. This mission will launch, uh, some time around 2013, if all goes well.
Michael Richmond "This is the heart that broke my finger."
mwrsps@rit.edu http://stupendous.rit.edu
Wikipedia also has an entry on the planet, dubbed HD 189733b.
Notice that astronomers are not typically confused with the lives of the party.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
640k ought to be enough for anyone.
All we need now is some sodastream flavouring and we're sorted!
Are they sure that someone didn't spill soda pop on the lens, when they took the measurements? Hmm, this spectroscopic analysis seems remarkably like the spectrum of Pepsi.
Unless, of course, our new alien overlords also drink Pepsi!
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
Suntan lotion won't stop you from getting baked; it will just leave your corpse without that nice, crispy skin. I say don't fight it and lather up with butter, salt, and pepper.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
Doxide is what you get when Linux documentation geeks consume Doxygen.
" NASA hailed the news as proof that Kepler will be able to do its job of finding planets capable of supporting life."
Somebody's trying to avoid funding cuts from the new administration
If you think
Carbon dioxide, on the other hand, is a surprise: at the temperatures and pressures encountered in an exoplanet atmosphere of this type, all carbon should be present as methane (if cool enough) or carbon monoxide. Giant planet atmospheres are generally far too hydrogen-rich for CO2 to form in any appreciable quantity. So its detection requires an extra-ordinary explanation for its origin.
Here is a Nature preprint from the same research group, describing H2O, CH4, and CO detection. I was hoping to find a research article (and not just a news story or press release) describing CO2 detection, but haven't found any yet...
Hotter than Hell, but considerably cooler than Heaven.
"Software is too expensive to build cheaply"
Suntan lotion won't stop you from getting baked
Nothing stops me from getting baked.
That may well be true, but that doesn't take away the negative impact SUVs have on the environment. An SUV is far heavier and emits far more greenhouse gasses than a regular car.
Just because other things are even worse doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything about massive, unnecessary cars. Get a smaller car, use transit, get a bike, it does have an impact. If you constantly argue that anything you do has a smaller impact than other things, we'll never get anywhere.
Is it really not obvious what they were saying? Does it really need to be spelled out? Apparently, so here goes. They were able to identify a planet that has both water and carbon dioxide. It happens to be very hot, and thus this particular planet is unlikely to host life, however it is a proof of concept for the technique of doing spectroscopy on distant exoplanets. They are going to be fielding better telescopes in the future, which should be able to detect smaller and cooler planets that are capable of supporting life.
Hope that makes sense!
The enemies of Democracy are
I was going to give you a +1 Funny for the 640K reference (pure genius!), but then I wrote this to explain why I was going to do mod you up. Tough luck.
Nothing stops me from lathering up with butter, salt, and pepper.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
Carbon Dioxide and Water + 100 tons per square inch atmospheric pressure != NO LIFE (look at the ocean floor)
Carbon Dioxide and Water + 100 tons per square inch atmospheric pressure + 1173K = NO LIFE
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.