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Water Detected At Record Distance From Earth
Matt_dk writes with news that scientists have detected water in a galaxy 11.5 billion light-years from Earth. Evidence came in the form of emissions from water masers around a quasar at the center of the galaxy. Detection at such a large distance was made possible by a closer, intervening galaxy which acted as a gravitational lens.
"'We were only able to discover this distant water with the help of the gravitational lens,' said Violette Impellizzeri, an astronomer with the Max-Planck Institute for Radioastronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn, Germany. 'This cosmic telescope reduced the amount of time needed to detect the water by a factor of about 1,000,' she added. The astronomers first detected the water signal with the Effelsberg telescope. They then turned to the VLA's sharper imaging capability to confirm that it was indeed coming from the distant galaxy. The gravitational lens produces not one, but four images of MG J0414+0534 as seen from Earth. Using the VLA, the scientists found the specific frequency attributable to the water masers in the two brightest of the four lensed images. The other two lensed images, they said, are too faint for detecting the water signal. The radio frequency emitted by the water molecules was Doppler shifted by the expansion of the Universe from 22.2 GHz to 6.1 GHz."
We try to think about life as it may exist outside of our planet and solar system, but we always run into the problem of defining the term life. Because of our limited understanding, we search for pockets of water, which ought to at least provide a certain frame of reference close to our own in which we could find something that resembles life as we know it.
But we may also be overlooking life that we just don't understand and haven't the means to detect yet. Life as a system of planets, taking millenia to process a single thought. Life as rapidly integrating and disintegrating iron meshes on the surface of stars, communicating electrically and going through thousands of generations in seconds.
Finding water at these distances isn't so much the search for alternate worlds to habitate when we lose our Earth, it is much more a search for life similar to ours. But perhaps, I wonder, we are missing a whole range of other life in the universe due to our lack of capacity to imagine other types of life.
Filthy, barbaric Christians and Muslims are killing good, honest Humans right here on this planet, and all you can think about is water being found billions of miles away? Get some priorities!
Fixed that for you asshole.
Idiot, if we don't find new sources of water how are we supposed to continue the waterboarding?
Wake me up when they detect booz.
Pssst....hey...wake up!.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
And if they find some phosphoric acid in there, too, we'll get to hear that there be aliens because they already have Cola.
Water may be a necessity for life (at least the kind we know about), but it is no sign whatsoever that there is any. And at that distance, it doesn't matter for us either because we can't even get people to the next planet in our solar system, much less to the next solar system in our galaxy, so looking at water in some far away galaxy is pretty pointless.
Let's try to focus here, people. Let's get to Mars. Get something going there. And work from there. There's little use in looking for far away water when we can't even use the one that's just around the corner, universally speaking.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.