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Water Found in Exoplanet's Atmosphere
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Apr 10, 2007 02:22 PM
from the so-close dept.
from the so-close dept.
anthemaniac writes "Astronomers have long suspected that water should exist in the atmospheres of extrasolar planets. Now they have evidence. Water has been discovered in a planet called HD209458b, which was previously found to have oxygen. From the article: 'The discovery ... means one of the most crucial elements for life as we know it can exist around planets orbiting other stars.' But don't go looking for little green men. You might remember HD209458b as a 'hot Jupiter' that boils under the glow of its very nearby star."
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Straw poll: (Score:4, Interesting)
How many people now think that ETs of some form do exist?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a big universe. Chances are very good that other life of some sort exists. However, we have found no evidence of life yet, despite the presence of oxygen which would usually be considered a strong indicator of the presence of life.
"Despite the oxygen, the faraway pla [space.com]
Re:Straw poll: (Score:5, Insightful)
Another thing is, we often make the following assumptions in terms of life forms, and we can be ceratain of none of them:
1) requirements of Carbon and Oxygen
-- Sulphur, Silicon, and any far-left or far-right non-noble element can handle the requirements here (namely something that can form long complex structures, and something highly reactive that nonetheless has stable compounds wherein it exists)
2) The life will be based on nucleic acids (RNA/DNA) and amino acids (proteins)
-- While these are more simple structures that could perform their tasks while remaining stable, there are other structures that could potentially store data and perform structural/chemical tasks.
Parent
Re:Straw poll: (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Straw poll: (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Straw poll: (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree with you that there could well be life that is vastly different than what we are used to.
But this doesn't make sense to me. When you say far-left and far-right, I assume you mean the periodic table. That means you are talking about Cl, Br, Na, K, etc. That doesn't make sense (they tend to only make 1 bond), so I figure you are talking about the p-block.
That means you are talking about B, F, C, Si, Cl and Br. What is special about carbon is that it forms 4 bonds. So, this means you are just talking about carbon and silicon. Let's throw out anything heavier (Ge, Sn) because they aren't that abundant.
Sure, there could be something based on silicon but... Look at CO2 (a gas) and SiO2 (silica, a solid). Carbon just seems like the best candidate for life to be based on. Nitrogen (or P) and boron (or Al) seem to be the best other candidates.
Parent
Re:Straw poll: (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a misconception; the sort of silicon-based life that we're talking about are not precisely the same as carbon chains. In carbon chains, you typically have C-C-C-C-C... etc. In the equivalent silicon (actually silicone) molecule, you have Si-O-Si-O-Si-O-Si.... etc. Si-Si-Si... etc doesn't chain well, but Si-O-Si-O.. chains indefinitely. Compare a hydrocarbon-based lubricant with a silicone-based one, hydrocarbon solids (plastics) with silicone ones, etc. There's been a lot more research on the former so far; the latter can likewise be functionalized.
A few differences in the chemistry:
1) C-C-C-C-C... chains can freely rotate, while Si-O-Si-O... chains need a specific "joint" to do so.
2) Carbon more readily double and triple bonds, although removing Os from the Si-O chain can create similar (but not equivalent) effects.
There are all sorts of biologically interesting silicon compounds. The silicon equivalent of methane is silane. It's even more flammable than methane; it's hypergolic with our atmosphere (burns on contact). Its giving up of its hydrogen could be seen as equivalent to ATP and its phosphorus. Longer "silanes" scale like longer hydrocarbons -- their vapor pressure decreases the longer they get (silanes with 2-3 silicons make for good wood sealants). Zeolites are silicates (your typical silicon solids that you were picturing) but with various metal ions interspersed with them; they're excellent, highly selective catalysts. Probably the most biologically interesting (to me, at least) are silanols [ic.ac.uk], which exist naturally in Earth's oceans (and probably predated life), and can form all sorts of catalytic groups, membranes, etc.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Hydrogen, helium, oxygen, carbon, neon, iron, nitrogen, silicon, magnesium, sulfur. There's your top ten, in that order. It's interesting that carbon, versatile as it is, is so very common. Considering that hydrogen and oxygen, hence water, rank even higher, I think that life as we know it has statistically higher odds of appearing, especially in conditions where water is liquid. The physics of these compounds i
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From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon#Silicon-based _life [wikipedia.org]:
Also, the article points out that long complex ch
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Re:Straw poll: (Score:4, Interesting)
Your Hitler comparison is flawed. Hitler was only one person, and most vegetarians are nothing like Hitler. However, a majority of Christians (at least in the USA; my apologies if you live somewhere else where Christians are not fundamentalist) do believe the earth is 6000 years old, that evolution is false, that Creationism should be taught in public schools, etc. So if you're one of the rare minority that doesn't believe this way, and doesn't try to push these beliefs on everyone else, then that's great. But you have to acknowledge that most of your co-believers are like this this.
Parent
Re:Straw poll: (Score:4, Informative)
CBS poll [cbsnews.com]
Before you say anything about the validity of polls, I think they're a lot more valid than some comments from random people like you on Slashdot who are trying to defend a position with no evidence whatsoever.
Anyway, the poll referenced shows 55% believing that "God created humans in present form", meaning they're Creationists. More importantly, 37% favor teaching Creationism instead of Evolution in schools, and 65% favor teaching both.
So your assertion that most Christians in the USA ("WHEREVER" is a totally different ball of wax; other places don't have nearly as many fundamentalists as the USA) "DONT WANT" creationism taught in school is obviously false. The percentage of Christians in the USA is certainly significantly less than 100%, with all the atheists, agnostics, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and others. Let's say it's around 75% for argument's sake; if 65% out of 75% believes both Creationism and Evolution should be taught, that's obviously a majority. And the 37% of the stricter Creationism-only group is still about half. Again, look at the significance here: HALF of US Christians want Creationism (only) taught in schools.
So no, my opinions are not based on any personal anecdotes, but instead large nationwide surveys.
Parent
Re:Straw poll: (Score:5, Interesting)
Which tells us nothing except that it is possible for life to exist. The fact that life exists here tells us absolutely nothing about the likelihood of life arising apart from its being greater than zero because for obvious reasons we are sampling from a biased distribution, being alive ourselves. :-)
> Do you have any idea how many billions of stars are in our galaxy, and how many billions of galaxies are in the observable universe?
As it happens, yes. But I also know that combinatorial explosions [wikipedia.org] can generate numbers vastly larger than the number of things in the physical universe and the number of ways of arranging matter is described by a combinatorial explosion. Who knows how many of those combinations involve life, but it has the potential to be incredibly small. Small in a way that the size of the universe doesn't touch in bigness.
> If you are saying, "no one knows for sure. Don't say you're sure the chances are good if you can't prove they are," then that is certainly valid.
Looks like we're actually in total agreement.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I can't help but wonder how long it'll take till we have the same leap for detecting life once we know exactly what we're looking for. I'm hoping it'll be sooner rather than later.
Read this book: Rare Earth (Score:5, Interesting)
It is a very well-researched book that goes into great detail on all the different terms of the drake equation (and a few extra terms) and shows what the best scientific evidence suggests are the actual values for those terms. The bottom line of the book is that single-celled life is probably incredibly common, it's probably everywhere. Life that's big enough for you to actually see is probably pretty rare. Intelligent life is very rare, and technological civilizations are practically a miracle.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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civilizations can still be both miraculous and "common"
Wait. Isn't "common" usually defined in terms of a ratio? dictionary.com definition 4 says: widespread; general; ordinary
So by that definition, even if there are billions of civilizations, if the ratio is 1/10000000000000 then I don't think you can call it common.
Anyway, the grandparent post asked, "who believes in ET" and I think that a scientific answer: ET is out there, but maybe not even in our galaxy. So we are very very unlikely to ever find any life that we can talk to. The question that people
Re:Read this book: Rare Earth (Score:5, Funny)
Kind of like on slashdot.
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Re:Perhaps (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Perhaps (Score:5, Funny)
Vorlons? More like Vogons. You know, the fat [cdc.gov], bureaucratic [irs.gov] bullies [whitehouse.gov] who write horrible emo poetry [myspace.com] and eventually demolished the Earth in order to build a useless bypass [usnews.com].
Parent
Do your research... (Score:5, Funny)
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Man, you must have some serious lag times.
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Man, you must have some serious lag times.
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Criteria for Life (Score:5, Funny)
Where there is hot water, there are saunas. Where there are saunas, there are tourists. Thus this remote planet has life, and most likley drinks with little umbrellas (or "snotzwathctls" as the local dialect probably refers to them).
Of course! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Of course! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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Boiling water? No problem! (Score:4, Insightful)
No little green men? (Score:4, Funny)
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Aaaaaahhhhhh...... (Score:5, Funny)
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HD209458a (Score:2)
"Hi, I'm Troy McClure..." (Score:5, Funny)
"You might remember me from such planets as HD209458b, the 'hot Jupiter' that boils under the glow of its very nearby star, and from Earth, the deadliest planet of them all."
HOT JUPITERS !!! its back (Score:3, Funny)
ah hey. theres a new meme for you.
Life can easily exist (Score:4, Interesting)
They just need to evolve in that environment.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Maximum temperature for microbial life at pressure is closer to 200 degrees F or 90C. Similar to Thermus aquaticus in yellowstone, an extremophile that lives above 70C.
Don't get too carried away! (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Personally, I lean toward that idea that life can only *originate* in a small window of 'specs' ( such as 70-100* F, in water, with plenty of amino acids floating around ),
But can life evolve (Score:2)
It turns out that evolution is easy, but genesis is hard. Remember, scientists have manag
incomplete summary (Score:3, Interesting)
But don't go looking for little green men. You might remember HD209458b as a 'hot Jupiter' that boils under the glow of its very nearby star."
but neglects to answer the very important question this raises :
Given what we remember about HD209458b, what colour little men should we look for?
My initial guess was red, but there's no guarantee HD209458b-ians can even get sunburned.
If old Sci-Fi has taught anything (Score:2)
Also, there entire culture can be overthrown by 1 starfleet captian.
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Water for life as *WE* know it. (Score:2, Insightful)