Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Clouds May Hide Water On Alien Worlds (sciencemag.org)

Posted by Soulskill on from the may-also-hide-beer-and-patio-furniture dept.

sciencehabit writes: Astronomers have discovered about 2000 planets around other stars, but they have few hard facts about what they are like, such as the contents of their atmospheres. Now, a team of astronomers using the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have gathered enough data (abstract) to compare 10 large exoplanets, finding a range of atmosphere types, and to propose a solution to an early mystery of exoplanet atmospheres: why some don't seem to have enough water. Study lead David Sing said, "I’m really excited to finally 'see' this wide group of planets together, as this is the first time we’ve had sufficient wavelength coverage to compare multiple features from one planet to another. We found the planetary atmospheres to be much more diverse than we expected, and this significantly progresses our understanding of what makes up these planets and how they were created."

27 comments

  1. On some worlds could are water by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    OMG

    1. Re:On some worlds could are water by Dutchmaan · · Score: 1

      "On some worlds could are water"

      Please speak Terran...

    2. Re:On some worlds could are water by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 3, Informative

      "On some worlds could are water"

      Please speak Terran...

      "On some worlds could are water" is a perfectly cromulent Terran phrase.

      --
      Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
    3. Re:On some worlds could are water by cfalcon · · Score: 1

      Well, you could embiggen it to descripify the other moleculuses.

  2. Easy solution by sinij · · Score: 3, Funny

    Easy solution. Send high-yield nukes to candidate nearby worlds and use spectroscopy to observe element composition. By the time we travel there in-person any radiation would have long since decayed.

    (and this is why alien life doesn't have to be intentionally hostile to cause us a great deal of harm)

    1. Re:Easy solution by Jason+Levine · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I feel like there's a sci-fi story there.

      A program is started to detect alien atmosphere composition via high yield nuclear weapons. Nukes are launched but it takes hundreds of years for them to reach their targets and the program is forgotten about. In the meantime, mankind develops FTL drives and colonizes the planets. The nukes arrive after the colonies have been established for awhile and mankind winds up nuking itself.

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    2. Re:Easy solution by sinij · · Score: 2

      Ray Bradbury beat us to this idea by many decades.

    3. Re:Easy solution by Jason+Levine · · Score: 1

      I knew that there was at least one story about a generational ship being leapfrogged by FTL ships (and the generational ship's passengers needing to deal with their empty planet to colonize not being no empty anymore), but I didn't know of one dealing with an old weapon launched needing to be dealt with by the descendants of those who launched it. Of course, it doesn't surprise me that this would have been written by someone already.

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    4. Re:Easy solution by rgbatduke · · Score: 1

      Easy for which particular value of easy? The one equating to "the most expensive and ambitious project ever undertaken by humans?" Or did you mean to send a probe that arrives after the human species has either evolved into something else or is extinct?

      So far, we have managed less than 20 km/sec at the outer reaches of the solar system, achieved with multiple gravity assists along the way. Estimates of the time required to reach the nearest start, which AFAIK has no candidates for the project, range from 81,000 years for ion drive to 85 years for Orion drive that so far does not really exist anywhere but in science fiction novels and which would cost a fabulous amount of money to build in orbit, fuel, and launch.

      If we DID go to the trouble of converting asteroids into Orion-drive craft to go to stars, don't you think we could find some better use for them then to send nukes that would give us information about their atmospheres 3 or 4 centuries from whenever we sent them? Perhaps super-AI and genetic factories and terraforming equipment, perhaps something else? Or do you really think that it is reasonable to assume that humans can have an attention span and political civilization at this point that lasts the 400 to 1000 years necessary for projects like this? How is it even possible to justify the expense, given that there are only a few dozen more important issues confronting us that we need to resolve before this becomes conceptually feasible.

      Of course you might reply that in ten or twenty years technology may have changed entirely. And I agree! But at the point is that then there will be additional, probably better options than dropping in a nuke. Like just (I dunno) sampling the atmosphere and transmitting back a message as to what it is (and a whole lot more).

      --
      Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
    5. Re:Easy solution by sinij · · Score: 1

      While I enjoyed reading your informed post, it was clear that you didn't get the actual point of my response. The point was two-fold: a) homage to old SF story where they nuked the last martian city while trying to spectographically detect water b) highlight the imperative to diversify from just one planet in case of designed or natural catastrophe wipes us out.

      As to actual colonization - anything short of 'lego' self-assembling mission is doomed to fail. The probability of us finding planet that can sustain earth-like life is abysmally small when constrained by distance, but this probability is more favorable if we could adapt to a planet capable of sustaining organic life. That is, it is easier to adapt to a planet on arrival than try to terraform it before or once we get there.

    6. Re:Easy solution by rgbatduke · · Score: 1

      No arguments. Although "terraforming" to the extent of seeding a water ocean to transform a marginally unfavorable atmosphere biologically doesn't seem impossible or unreasonableI didn't recognize the reference to SF -- just as a matter of curiousity, what's the story? I thought I'd read nearly all of the old SF, but obviously I'm mistaken.

      rgb

      --
      Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
    7. Re:Easy solution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Send high-yield nukes to candidate nearby worlds

      It's the only way to be sure...

    8. Re:Easy solution by sinij · · Score: 1

      I though it was one of the Martian Chronicles stories, but when I went looking I couldn't find it. Maybe something I read in Azimovs and misattributed since then.

  3. Ummm.. by kheldan · · Score: 2

    Wouldn't clouds detected on alien worlds, indicate a fairly decent chance that there is water there?

    (Yes, yes, yes, I know, the clouds could be something other than water vapor -- which is why I used the word 'chance')

    --
    Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
    1. Re:Ummm.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Decent is a bit non-specific here. What do you mean with decent chance? More than 50%? Close to one in a million?

    2. Re:Ummm.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It simply means the chance is clothed. Get a dictionary.

      Sheesh.

    3. Re:Ummm.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      They have some idea what the clouds consist of, based on how they reflect/filter their sun's light. It's silicates and other minerals, not water. The point is if such a cloudy planet has water oceans, we would still not see the water signature because the clouds are in the way.

    4. Re:Ummm.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I suggest you look in a dictionary for the word 'decent'.

      I also suggest you use the same dictionary to look up the word 'pedantic', while you're at it.

      Then, with the same dictionary again, look up 'prostitute'; there should be a picture of your mom there, likely with my penis in her anus.

    5. Re:Ummm.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      water oceans

      water in the atmosphere

    6. Re:Ummm.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Decent is a bit non-specific here. What do you mean with decent chance? More than 50%? Close to one in a million?

      It's a helluva lot more specific than "may".

      Slashdot "may" have editors.

    7. Re:Ummm.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's a helluva lot more specific than "may".

      Slashdot "may" have editors.

      Dice propaganda at its best

  4. Yes, just like Venus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Oh those mysterious clouds that obviosuly hide a tropical civilization!

    1. Re:Yes, just like Venus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      With dinosaurs, carnivorous frogs, and super-genius lizard-men.

  5. joie zaza by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    aliens may hide clouds on water worlds

  6. My God Jim... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is this news now?

    Breaking News! Clouds my hide cities!!!

    Breaking News! Lack of clouds may not hide cities. (just as useful)

  7. Clouds by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...that man is a feeling creature... and because of it, the greatest in the universe. He learned too late for himself that men have to find their own way, to make their own mistakes. There can't be any gift of perfection from outside ourselves. And when men seek such perfection... they find only death... fire... loss... disillusionment... the end of everything that's gone forward. Men have always sought an end to toil and misery, but it can't be given, it has to be achieved. There is hope, but it has to come from inside, from Man himself.

  8. What are clouds made of, Dad? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Magic and demons my child. Magic and demons.