Herschel Space Observatory Finds Precursors of Life In Orion 142
ogre7299 recommends an announcement out of Caltech on a milestone for HIFI, the Herschel Space Observatory's Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared. "The Herschel Space Observatory has revealed the chemical fingerprints of potential life-enabling organic molecules in the Orion Nebula, a nearby stellar nursery in our Milky Way galaxy. ... This detailed-spectrum, obtained with the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HIFI) — one of Herschel's three innovative instruments — demonstrates the gold mine of information that Herschel-HIFI will provide on how organic molecules form in space. The spectrum, one of the first to be obtained with HIFI since it returned to full health in January 2010 following technical difficulties, clearly demonstrates that the instrument is working well. ... [The HIFI instrument had previously been offline since] August 2009 when HIFI experienced an unexpected voltage spike in the electronic system, probably caused by a high-energy cosmic particle, resulting in the instrument shutting down. On 14 January 2010, HIFI was successfully switched back on using its spare electronics, with science observations commencing on 28 February."
Re:So, what next? (Score:1, Informative)
We send a large fleet of Death-Stars armed with Stellar-Converters to exterminate those Antareans,
Re:Reverse optical psychology (Score:2, Informative)
Umm, no.
1. You are assuming that all life works in the same way, that it will be based directly on absorption of solar energy.
2. Even if it was happening as such, the amount of light absorbed by life in any part of the spectrum represents an unbelievably small fraction of the total solar output. On Earth, the total radiations received is ~1% of total solar output. And of course, plants use a fraction of that energy. To detect this over cosmic scales, you would need an instrument with sensitivity that is probably not achievable (yet, anyway) due to basic quantum barriers.
3. The instrument has high spectral sensitivity, you would need to couple that with spatial sensitivity to figure out if there is actually a local region where the spectrum is different. Given that planets are again, very tiny compared to stars , and we are just beginning to observe them indirectly out of our solar system, that seems like a hard call.
4. Finally, how would you know what the real , unperturbed spectrum of the star? The HIFI can detect signatures in the infra-red which is essentially vibrational and rotational modes of molecules. We know for sure that these organic molecules are far to unstable to exist in the stellar environment. So there must be a pool of it which the light is passing through. Their way is far better than yours because it works.
Organic Molecules (Score:5, Informative)
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