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Scientists Find Water on Extra-solar Planet 220
amigoro writes "Scientists have, for the first time, conclusively discovered the presence of water vapour in the atmosphere of a planet beyond our Solar System, according to an article appearing in Nature. They made the discovery by analysing the transit of the gas giant HD 189733b across its star, in the Infrared using data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. HD 189733b is a 'hot jupiter', a gas giant that is roughly the size and mass of Jupiter but orbits very close to the star, so no chance of life there."
Hrrmph! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hrrmph! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hrrmph! (Score:5, Informative)
Hydrogen is fairly common in the universe (90% of its composition), but oxygen isn't except in and near stars (because it is only created by fusion inside the stars and ejected free by supernovas). It makes sense that gas giants will pick up traces of oxygen and then form some water and it makes sense that rocky planets will have the potential to form water since the major constituent of silicious minerals is obviously quartz or SiO2. Any rocky planet that has had some differentiation process would likely have the silicious minerals float to the top like with the Earth and thus have a great potential of having liquid water form if the atmosphere could support it. Mercury, Venus, and Mars are great examples of places where the atmosphere could not support liquid water. On one side if do not have a powerful enough geomagnetic field, the solar wind will strip the atmosphere leaving the surface bare like Mercury and Mars. On the other side, if you gas the atmosphere too much with CO2 from volcanoes, the atmosphere will superheat allowing the water vapour to rise and be broken up by UV light like on Venus. So there is a sweet spot where the Earth exists to have a rocky planet with a strong enough geomagnetic field and enough gassing by volcanoes to support the atmosphere.
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Re:Hrrmph! (Score:5, Funny)
Kind of like how theoretically, in spite of being a male who reads slashdot, I should be able to get laid. It's just pretty cool when I get conclusive proof of that theory.
It's the magnetic field (Score:5, Interesting)
On Venus too, it was the magnetic field -- or rather, lack thereof -- that did it. It's not just that some water gets split into hydrogen and oxygen, in which case it would just recombine sooner or later. It's that on Venus the lack of magnetic field allowed the solar winds to gradually wipe away the hydrogen. Venus is heavy enough to hold on th the slightly heavier elements, like Oxygen and Carbon anyway, even without a magnetic field. Hydrogen is a different story.
Outgassing CO2, well:
1. Earth spewed enough of that too, which is how it thawed back when cyanobacteria turned the atmosphere to O2 and the whole planet got deep frozen. (The Sun started a lot "cooler" and gradually warmed up. _Now_ it's warm enough to support life without a greenhouse effect, but in the beginning it wasn't.) I don't think there is any evidence that Venus spewed much more CO2 than Earth. On Earth just a lot of it got, well, buried right back. Say, in the Carboniferous era coal deposits.
The somewhat interesting corolary is that if we had too _little_ outgassing, then we'd have been really screwed. It took, IIRC, some 30% CO2 in the air to thaw that snowball Earth. Too little of it, and the deep freeze might just have continued long enough to be a total extinction event. Or at the very least a 1 billion year (or maybe more) pause in life evolution until the sun output went up some more.
2. Earth's original atmosphere was _methane_, which is a greenhouse gas about 200 times more potent than CO2. So if Venus would have been screwed by its outgassed CO2 atmosphere, the Earth should have been screwed 200 times harder (or close enough. Well over 100 times anyway.) In practice, that atmosphere on Earth just helped keep it warm enough at a time when the Sun was a lot weaker. If Venus had had a CO2 atmosphere at the time, well, it would have been a frozen snowball, quite the opposite of boiling off its water. In practice, it's a lot more likely that Venus started with a mostly Methane atmosphere too, only the hydrogen was swept away whenever some of it got broken up.
Pretty much if you start with water, methane and CO2, and continuously lose hydrogen, you end up with just the oxygen and carbon left, which means a lot of CO2. That's likely the short story of what happened on Venus.
3. There's an interesting extra factor there, which could have doomed Earth anyway, and that is: timing. If life or photosynthesis had started any later, for example, that methane and CO2 atmosphere would have sealed its fate. As I was saying methane is an _extremely_ potent greenhouse gas, so given enough extra time of gradually increasing solar output, it would have just boiled off the oceans. No liquid water, no life, game over.
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Well, it didn't on Venus, did it?
CO2 from volcanoes? (Score:3, Funny)
Volcanoes? That's impossible! Al Gore told me that excess CO2 can only come from SUVs.
pebfab (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes and no (Score:3, Informative)
Well, yes and no. Volcanoes do spew all sorts of stuff into the air, the question is just how much of it.
Thawing up snowball earth I mentioned before took up to 30 million years, and that's with zero photosynthesis or other processes getting it out of the air again. So we're talking geologic timescales. Admittedly that required accumulating some 13% CO2 in the air (looks like I was remembering wrong when I said 30% before)
Erata (Score:2)
Just shows I shouldn't write in a hurry, and I definitely should engage the brains first.
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hmm (Score:5, Funny)
The only extra solar planet I know of is Pluto, and we've already had that discussion.
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Apparently we've already had this one [slashdot.org], too.
Extra-solar planets & Old debates (Score:2)
Being that this new planet is also tidally locked, I guess we have our answer.
___
Expert Grant Writing for Non-profits and Businesses. [grantgorilla.com]
no change of life like us (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm sure that Ludacris's response to that would be your too white and nerdy
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you're foo, not your. "Is our children learning?" how
you're = you are. your = possessive
back to skool foo, before I bust a cap in yo ass.
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Re:no change of life like us (Score:5, Funny)
"And yet it may indeed be that ours is the easiest, and therefore most likely, form of life to get started."
o argument about it. Its a lot easier than, say, building a car. A car requires over 3,000 pieces - to make a human only requires 2 bumpers and a connecting rod.
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Ah, now I know what Grace Jones meant when she sang "pull up to the bumper baby".
I thought she was singing about being a Race Queen or something.
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It could very well be that the "arrogant" or offensive answer is the right one. The total lack of any evidence for extraterrestrial life, intelligent or otherwise, should be a strong indicator that we are very, very alone.
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After having a couple of blind guys wearing boxing gloves comb through this haystack, we conclude that there are no needles in it.
Seriously, though - our tools for looking for extraterrestrial life (let alone outside our solar system) are still exceptionally crude. We can't even reliably find earth-sized planets outside the solar systems yet - we need pure luck for t
Re:no change of life like us (Score:5, Informative)
I'm surprised parent got modded down. There is an enormous amount of evidence to imply lack of extraterrestrial life. Lack of radio waves is the major one, for me, and no one has explained this so far.
Absent an amazing discovery of microbial bacteria or fossils on mars or titan, I think it's very likely that our first indication of life will be the discovery of a planet with a stable oxygen/nitrogen/CO2 atmosphere like our own.
Assuming that all life and civilizations evolve at about the same rate, and all life eventually leads to intelligent life, we're likely to find millions of Alien Life Forms (ALFs) before we find any that are within a few hundred years of us in technology. Why is any more explanation needed?
Re:no change of life like us (Score:4, Insightful)
At the risk of starting a flamewar... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:no change of life like us (Score:4, Insightful)
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Lack of radio waves is the major one, for me, and no one has explained this so far.
Dinosaurs were around for millions of years and, for some reason, never developed radios. Satisfied?
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Since we're pretty much undetectable from all but the most exceedingly tiny distances, why should we expect any other civilization to be different?
There is always a first "planet" where it appears (Score:2)
Re:There is always a first "planet" where it appea (Score:2)
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That's for reducing this to a semantic argument.
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We know the human race is not special from a biological POV. For me, that is the limit where arrogance stops. I have a hard time thinking about arrogance in favor of a type of lifeform (nationalism, racism, specism, lifetypism?).
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Re:no change of life like us (Score:5, Funny)
Unlike the species of evil gas bags we keep electing...
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"no chance of life there" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"no chance of life there" (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"no chance of life there" (Score:5, Funny)
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I vote "intelligent squids". (Score:2)
Anyway, a race of intelligent squids would probably NEVER be found by us (barring FTL drives). Their environment just would not be able to support the technology needed to communicate with us over inter-stellar distances. They could not send to us, they could not receive from us.
And there aren't many options for them developing a space program of their own.
Given that OUR planet is at least a 2nd generation world (coalesced from a previous sun's death), how man
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I believe that statement is incorrect. Intelligence has a finite limit when it diverges to stupidity. However you can't define an upper limit of Intelligence.
Intelligence starts off from 0 and shoots off into infinity.
Therefore in an infinite universe, you are always stupider than the rest of the Universe.
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Like there's no water vapor in earth's atmosphere?
According to the article, the planet is gravity-locked, so while the atmosphere may be 1000K, the "dark side" might be "interesting". Look at Mercury - hot enough during the day to melt metals, and cold enough in some spots at night that the air you are breathing right now would be liquid. If it were gravity-locked, the dark side would be the coldest spot in the solar system - colder than Pluto.
While a great discovery, Is this surprising? (Score:4, Interesting)
The most common heteroatomic molecule is likely to be water...
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Presumably, you meant "outside of our solar system", which would probably be a bit more accurate.
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Some miscellaneous information: (Score:5, Informative)
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HD 189733b is a gas giant planet with 1.15 times the mass of Jupiter and 1.26 its diameter. It orbits its primary in only 2.219 days and in a distance of 0.0313 AU. This is one of the closest planet-star systems known. The planet's surface temperature is 920 kelvin on the poles and 1220 kelvin on the bright side.
Have they come up with a theory on how such planets could form? The last time I read up on this stuff, before they discovered extra-solar planets, the idea was that a star like Sol had an accretion disk that was spread along the solar plane thanks to centrifugal force. The solar wind helped push much of the lighter gases out to the far edges and the heavier, rockier material stayed closer to the inside. Due to the influences of gravity and other forces, you tended to see matter bunch up in concentric circl
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Welcome to "Planet Sauna" - Where a week is like 3 years, and it never rains. Humidity 90%. Heat Index, 980K. Don't forget to have your air conditioning serviced regularly!
No Chance Of Life?!?! WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a pretty bold statement. Scientist predicted that life couldn't survive in a number of environments on earth, yet it has been found in each one:
1- In lakes frozen hundreds of meters down in antarctica
2- In the dept of the ocean where NO light permeates
3- Next to Volcanic openings in the earths crust were tempuratues are well over 800 degress c
4- In the highly acidic and poisionus ponds in Yellowstone National Park
I am sure that there are more but I can't think of any.
So for some scientist to say that there can't be life, I just have to role my eyes. One thing that I have learned about life is that life will find away. So just because we can't concieve of the possible forms that life might take its a little presumputous for us to assume that it can't exist.
Earth is a small speck in the universe, it doesn't matter if you believe in God or not but to assume that life, as we know it on this planet, is the only form and location of life in the universe is a very ignorant view point.
I am of the firm conviction that as soon as we have the technology to explores these remote and hostile locations we will find things that we haven't even dreamed could exist.
So to get off my little soapbox here; if there is water there is probably life, and just because the conditions on the planet don't fit are current formula for life doesn't mean that our formula is correct.
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IF NOT (SELECT is_there_life FROM scientist WHERE name = 'Tinetti')
CREATE ROLE eyes;
END IF;
In fairness, I think that's just a bad paraphrasing. "This is a far from habitable world," if you RTA.
Re:No Chance Of Life?!?! WTF? (Score:4, Informative)
"so no chance of life there"
but in the article it clearly says:
"This is a far from habitable world," she adds.
Which means it's a no for us. As well:
"Although the planet is an unlikely candidate in the search for life"
Which is no the same as "no chance"
Your post makes perfect sense but to assume that it is a scientist saying that there can't be life is incorrect.
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In your intestines. This is also not a very "friendly" environment, considering it's full of digestive enzymes. Yet life thrives.
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Hell, there are microbes that live and thrive in the heart of nuclear reactors, surviving both the heat and the radiation with ease. They'd be just the type to find a hot planet ultra-close to the sun a paradise..
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Not much chance of life (Score:2)
1- In lakes frozen hundreds of meters down in antarctica
2- In the dept of the ocean where NO light permeates
3- Next to Volcanic openings in the earths crust were tempuratues are well over 800 degress c
4- In the highly acidic and poisionus ponds in Yellowstone National Park
I think the problem is not that life is unable to adapt so that it can survive in these extreme environments. The proble
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Re:No Chance Of Life?!?! WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Mars, we've not even gone to. We've got some rock inspecting toys up there, but that's about it.
Venus, we've never been to there either. Our probes have sampled the atmosphere, that's about it. We still have no idea why it has such a strange rotation.
We have absolutely no credible statement to make about the prevalence of life in the solar system, let alone the universe. But hey, anonymous person on Slashdot, thanks setting us straight.
Yes, we have been to Venus (Score:3, Informative)
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That is exactly right.
Unfortunately for you, the statement the OP objected to was "no chance of life there."
Good grief. Please learn English.
I'm going to be rich. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm seeking venture capital.
I have a friend I'd like you to meet (Score:5, Funny)
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"conclusively"? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"conclusively"? (Score:5, Informative)
Here is an excellent article to get you started:
http://astrophysics.suite101.com/article.cfm/wate
And, of course:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spectro
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Why do I suddenly (Score:2)
Let me know when they find beer (Score:4, Funny)
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Super heated steam (Score:2)
Until some human drinks it and survives... (Score:2)
Flawed Proposition (Score:4, Insightful)
The universe is largely transparent, and we can see almost all the way to its privates. The decorations are of the same style and motif throughout, so we can pit our local gravity-well spirlies against theirs and make some reasonable guesses about how far away far is. Since it turns out it's in the neighbourhood of 13 billion lightyears away, I think we can -- as civilized folk -- agree that 13 billion is more than a golybillion shy of infinity.
Check my maths if you're a stickler, but I'm pretty sure I'm on solid ground here.
Space is finite (if gummy), therefore the number of decorations whorled up by our familiar physics is finite, therefore the number of little planety lumps inside of them is finite. Q.E.D.
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The Universe is not infinite, because the sky is dark at night.
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If the universe isn't macroscopically homogeneous, you wouldn't necessarily see light everywhere. For a degenerate case, imagine a universe such that there is an infinite number of galaxies which are all coplanar. You would have one bright band in the sky, but most of the sky would be dark.
If you assume the universe is infinite in space but finite in time, then i
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Re:I can prove there is no life on any other plane (Score:4, Informative)
There can be only a finite amount of life supporting planets.
Just because I feel like nit-picking. If you have an infinite number of planets, you also have an infinite number of planets that support life. Only this is a smaller "infinite" number.
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It's around 20 mins for anonymous posts. 2 minutes if you are logged in.
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Yes but there is AT LEAST ONE planet that we know about. So it's possible. Keep adding planets and you're bound to hit more.
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-Mike
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