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

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."

Comments

Easy solution

[sinij]

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)

Re:Easy solution

[Jason Levine]

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.

Re:Easy solution

[sinij]

Ray Bradbury beat us to this idea by many decades.

Ummm..

[kheldan]

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')

Re:Ummm..

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Yes, just like Venus

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh those mysterious clouds that obviosuly hide a tropical civilization!

Re:On some worlds could are water

[XxtraLarGe]

"On some worlds could are water"

Please speak Terran...

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