Scientists Find Water on Extra-solar Planet

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!

[fiannaFailMan]

All this talk about water on extra-solar planets. Now if they found a trapdoor, that would be something!

Re:Hrrmph!

[Salgat]

I don't get it, what is so amazing about water on other planets? Water is simply the reaction of two rather simple and common elements, Hydrogen and Oxygen. Making water is by far not a hard task.

Re:Hrrmph!

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent really isn't a troll.

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.

Re:

[kestasjk]

The planet they detected water vapor on is, apparently, close enough to its star to be molten. Maybe superheating doesn't get rid of the water vapor, maybe it's about having a magnetic field or something.

Re:

[Smauler]

Ok... if hydrogen is common in the universe, and oxygen is expected near stars, why is this unexpected? It's a big planet close to a star!

Re:Hrrmph!

[hazem]

It's not so much that it's unexpected. Theory predicts the existence of water on planets. This is just conclusive confirmation... which is pretty cool.

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

[Moraelin]

Well, you're right about Earth being a statistic improbability of many factors being just right, but methinks you're slightly wrong about Venus. Which is somewhat of a pity, since Venus is the perfect illustration of how many factors must be just right to get an Earth instead of a Venus.

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.

Re:

[Moraelin]

Life finds a way.

Well, it didn't on Venus, did it?

CO2 from volcanoes?

[Comboman]

On the other side, if you gas the atmosphere too much with CO2 from volcanoes, the atmosphere will superheat.

Volcanoes? That's impossible! Al Gore told me that excess CO2 can only come from SUVs.

pebfab

[benhocking]

I.e., problem exists between fish and brain. You must have had the babel fish inserted the wrong way, because Gore never said that. I realize that's supposed to be a joke, but to me, it's about as funny as "super serial" or "manbearpig".

Yes and no

[Moraelin]

Volcanoes? That's impossible! Al Gore told me that excess CO2 can only come from SUVs.

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

[Moraelin]

Actually, scratch the division by 100 years, or the result doesn't even have the right units. So it would need a little under 100,000 years, not a little under 1000 years.

Just shows I shouldn't write in a hurry, and I definitely should engage the brains first.

Re:

[arazor]

You try making water when your prostate is the size of grapefruit! Then we can talk about how making water is not difficult.

hmm

[User 956]

Scientists Find Water on Extra-solar Planet

The only extra solar planet I know of is Pluto, and we've already had that discussion.

Re:

[iminplaya]

...and we've already had that discussion.

Apparently we've already had this one [slashdot.org], too.

Extra-solar planets & Old debates

[neoshroom]

Speaking of past debates, this is a tidally locked planet with conclusive proof of water vapor. I remember a few months back when Gilese 581c [wikipedia.org] was talked about here there was a rather large debate on whether a tidally locked planet was likely to have an atmosphere with water.

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

[QuantumG]

The arrogance of thinking that we're the only possible form of life is ludicrous.

Re:

[Bad D.N.A.]

The arrogance of thinking that we're the only possible form of life is ludicrous.

I'm sure that Ludacris's response to that would be your too white and nerdy

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure that Ludacris's response to that would be your too white and nerdy

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.

Re:

[benhocking]

Your two critical. Its not everyone who can get they're grammar write.

Re:

[dsanfte]

And yet it may indeed be that ours is the easiest, and therefore most likely, form of life to get started.

Re:no change of life like us

[trolltalk.com]

"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.

Re:

[Basehart]

"A car requires over 3,000 pieces - to make a human only requires 2 bumpers and a connecting rod."

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.

Re:

[alexj33]

But just because you find the idea "ludicrous" or offensive doesn't make it more true/false one iota.

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.

Re:

[Ihlosi]

The total lack of any evidence for extraterrestrial life, intelligent or otherwise, should be a strong indicator that we are very, very alone.

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

[bhiestand]

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.

I don't even think that's good evidence for a lack of life. Just rounding here, but let's say humanity has been using radio waves for 100 years. 100 years from now we may well be using some other form of communication entirely. Of course I don't know what it could be, but nobody using smoke signals would've guessed radio waves would be the next big thing. So if, as a planet, we're only using detectably artificial radio waves for 200 years of the 4+ billion years the earth has existed and hundreds of millions of years that life has existed, and other planets develop in a very similar way, we're now looking for a stray quark in a haystack instead of a needle in a very large haystack. Hell, it's not very likely that the first extraterrestrial life we detect will be within 200 years of us in terms of technological advancement.

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

[Dragonslicer]

There is an enormous amount of evidence to imply lack of extraterrestrial life.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

At the risk of starting a flamewar...

[benhocking]

I find the similarities between belief in extraterrestrial life and God to be ... interesting, and I say this as an atheist who does believe that extraterrestrial life probably exists out there.

Re:no change of life like us

[smallfries]

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.

Well the simplest explanation is that we have looked well enough. Ironically the post directly above you gives one satisfactory explanation of this, but I guess you didn't look hard enough before posting:

And, heck, then there's the sheer size of interstellar distances. If there was an exact copy of Earth sitting in a solar system just a measly 200 ly away, we still wouldn't be able to pick up any of their transmissions, because they started transmitting less than 200 years ago.

I've yet to see a single piece of evidence of a lack of extraterrestrial life. Could you name a single piece from this enormous amount that you are aware of. Of course remembering that absence of evidence is not evidence of an absence...

Re:

[hondo77]

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?

Re:

[localman]

Lack of radio waves is the major one, for me, and no one has explained this so far.

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

[aepervius]

Who isn't to say we are the first intelligent and that now in parallel a lot is appearing ? Nothing. We can't draw conclusion either way right now. It is pure arrogance to go either way (we are alone (aka: we are the first)/ we are not alone). Both are as ludicrous as you put it.

Re:There is always a first "planet" where it appea

[QuantumG]

I said this to the other guy. Being arrogant is believing you are special.
 

Re:

[master_p]

We have to get rid of thousands of years of anthropocentric views though. Just watch any kid between 1 and 5 years old...he/she things he/she owns the world, and that everything that happens is about him/her. Thinking we are the center of the universe is imprinted in our genes, for survival reasons...it's hard to get over it.

Re:

[Himring]

True. I've heard of people who go out to events and parties and such. At those places there's these things called "girls." I know, I know. This is hard for /.ers to comprehend, but it's true....

Re:

[QuantumG]

Umm.. no. See, it's arrogant to assume we are special. That's what being arrogant is all about. Assuming you are not special is what people humble is all about.

That's for reducing this to a semantic argument.

Re:

[FST777]

It's arguable that arrogance might mean nothing on these scales. IMHO, both assumptions are sides in a debate, and oftentimes I find both equally arrogant.

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?).

Re:

[ZachMG]

The idea that we are alone and the idea that we aren't alone are both as astounding so why is it any less astounding that the lifeforms are not water based as that they are.

Re:no change of life like us

[Farmer Tim]

There can be a species of friendly gas bags

Unlike the species of evil gas bags we keep electing...

Re:

[hemorex]

... which, ironically, have no shame about showing off their 'glowy bits'...

"no chance of life there"

[MutantEnemy]

You mean no chance of life as we know it...

Re:"no chance of life there"

[CastrTroy]

Which brings up the question, "what is life?". For millenium we've considered ourselves chosen by god, or at least special among all the animals on earth. However, what if we found another form of life that was as intelligent as we are? What if we found one that was more intelligent. How are we even sure that what we're looking for is going to be anything like us. Who says there won't be a race the size of Smurfs on some other planet. Who says there's no way you could have animals that think and act like humans yet get their energy from the sun and breath carbon dioxide like plants do.

Re:"no chance of life there"

[Bad D.N.A.]

Dude... Your preaching to the choir.

Re:

[robgig1088]

Why stop there? Who claimed that said beings would even need to be cellular organisms? Perhaps there is some sort of alternative form of existence that we simply haven't considered that would enable life (in some form or another) in even the most severe conditions. Life will find a way.

I vote "intelligent squids".

[khasim]

But that's just because I think Cthulhu is cool.

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

Re:

[Gazzonyx]

Let me just throw this out there... what if we are the most intelligent in all the universe? The very idea terrifies and intrigues me at the same moment. Philosophical thoughts aside, imagine us as the alpha-males (erm... alpha-geeks, this is slashdot) of the universe.

Re:

[hondo77]

I saw an interview with Arthur C. Clarke where this came up. He said something along the lines of, "It's infinitely improbable. Then again, somebody has to be first."

Re:

[Gazzonyx]

I saw an interview with Arthur C. Clarke where this came up. He said something along the lines of, "It's infinitely improbable. Then again, somebody has to be first."

Great quote! I guess I just hope, if there is life out there, that we can choose to be followers instead of being forced to be leaders.

Re:

[resonte]

"More likely, in an infinite universe, we are of about average intelligence."

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.

Re:

[Fred Ferrigno]

No more.

Re:

[Hognoxious]

heroes any more.

Re:

[master_p]

Indeed, Jim.

Re:

[MutantEnemy]

Although fair enough - if it's just water vapour then the chances are probably no better than any other Jupiter-like planet. It's usually liquid water that we think is necessary for life...

Re:

[tomhudson]

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?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe and oxygen is the third most common (helium, the second, is inert).

The most common heteroatomic molecule is likely to be water...

Re:

[Le Marteau]

No, it's not surprising. No one is saying it is a 'surprise'. It's just that water has never been detected outside of our planet, scientifically, and that's kind of cool.

Re:

[Quietust]

It's just that water has never been detected outside of our planet, scientifically, and that's kind of cool.

Not even the polar icecaps on Mars, or the tenuous amounts of water vapor in its atmosphere?

Presumably, you meant "outside of our solar system", which would probably be a bit more accurate.

Re:

[Cadallin]

Even more accurate would be to say, water on a planet that is outside of our solar system. Water has been known to exist in interstellar clouds for decades.

Re:

[endianx]

What is "Europe"? Is that in Canada somewhere?

Some miscellaneous information:

[TripMaster Monkey]

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.

Re:

[jollyreaper]

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

Re:

[WalksOnDirt]

I think the formation theory you mentioned is still pretty much accepted. I think the close orbiting gas giants are thought to migrate inward through gravitational interactions with other objects around the star. Perhaps this is the normal result if a young star has a much thicker protoplanetary disk than Sol did.

Re:

[jollyreaper]

I think the formation theory you mentioned is still pretty much accepted. I think the close orbiting gas giants are thought to migrate inward through gravitational interactions with other objects around the star. Perhaps this is the normal result if a young star has a much thicker protoplanetary disk than Sol did.

What could cause the migration, even larger giants at the edge of the system?

Re:

[captainClassLoader]

The planet's surface temperature is 920 kelvin on the poles and 1220 kelvin on the bright side.

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?

[ThePopeLayton]

so no chance of life there.

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.

Re:

[irtza]

I agree wwith this sentiment as I think many others here would as well. One thing that many people seem to forget is that life replicates. All it takes is one self replicating particle to be made and it will propogate and fill up its environment

Re:

[turing_m]

"So for some scientist to say that there can't be life, I just have to role my eyes."

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?

[bahwi]

You've mistaken the poster for the scientist
"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.

Re:

[Dunbal]

I am sure that there are more but I can't think of any.

      In your intestines. This is also not a very "friendly" environment, considering it's full of digestive enzymes. Yet life thrives.

Re:

[Mousit]

> I am sure that there are more but I can't think of any.

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..

Re:

[Jugalator]

NOOO! Life can ONLY exist at a Earth-sized planet with a mean temperature of around 20 degrees Celsius and where it's made of around 70% of water! FFS! ;-)

Not much chance of life

[The Fun Guy]

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 think the problem is not that life is unable to adapt so that it can survive in these extreme environments. The proble

Re:

[ThePopeLayton]

On the contrary, I am actually a research scientist myself, and it is because of my scientific training that I have become skeptical of umbrella claims like the one in the article.

Re:No Chance Of Life?!?! WTF?

[QuantumG]

Yup, cause we really explored the Moon. After all, we landed on 5 or 6 random positions on the equator, stayed there for an hour or two and picked up some rocks. Planetoid explored!

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

[pauljlucas]

Venus, we've never been to there either. Our probes have sampled the atmosphere, that's about it.

No, the Venera missions in the 1970s by the former USSR landed on the surface, multiple times in fact.

Re:

[Hognoxious]

The moon landings were a fake. You can tell by how the flag flutters but the shadow doesn't, or something.

Re:

[blackicye]

Good grief. Please learn English.

The simple fact is that there is *NO* supporting evidence for life elsewhere.

Until some is uncovered, your thoughts are just pure speculation.

A century or so ago, everyone just assumed there was life on the moon. Guess what? We didn't find any. Not too long ago people assumed there was life on Venus and Mars. Guess what? We're not finding any.

I hate to burst your bubble, but "life" is just a relatively thin "bio-film" on this planet. Astronomically speaking, it's really, rea

Re:

[Legion303]

"Good grief. Please learn English. The simple fact is that there is *NO* supporting evidence for life elsewhere."

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.

[GreggBz]

The new company is called Space2ohh (TM). Clean, pure, out of this world refreshment.

I'm seeking venture capital.

I have a friend I'd like you to meet

[r_jensen11]

His name is Vijay [troyangrignon.com]

Re:

[Radres]

Oh good, something for me to wash down my baby mammoth [slashdot.org] with.

Re:

[AmberBlackCat]

You'll be cool until it turns out the center of the huge gaseous planet is a big blender.

"conclusively"?

[irtza]

First, let me state that I am not a chemist, so if there is someone who can do a better job of putting this into laymens term, I would be happy. with that said, how can we be sure its not the interaction of multiple molecules causing this or that this isn't a yet undiscovered molecule leading to this effect? I'm a bit wary of any indirrect measurement, so if someone with the proper background wishes to do some enlightenment, I'd be more than happy to read (even references would be nice).

Re:"conclusively"?

[fimbulvetr]

It's called Spectroscopy, and is extremely cool stuff. It's used in everything from detecting compositions of stars/planets to identifying really old manuscripts.

Here is an excellent article to get you started:

http://astrophysics.suite101.com/article.cfm/water _on_hd_209458b [suite101.com]

And, of course:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spectros copy&oldid=143266670 [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[posterlogo]

lol nice signature, though when there's only the two fat girls in the bar (win and mac) and one retard cripple (linux), i'll take the 2nd fattest girl any day of the week.

Why do I suddenly

[Bullfish]

Have the urge to go take a leak?

Let me know when they find beer

[NotQuiteReal]

When they detect beer on another planet, THEN, we'll be talking!

Re:

[Plutonite]

You're German aren't you?

Super heated steam

[flyingfsck]

If they can find a heat sink, then one can run a steam power station there and with some long wires, we can solve our energy crisis...

Until some human drinks it and survives...

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Its not water... Its just pictures we think are water

Flawed Proposition

[CheeseburgerBrown]

There aren't an infinite amount of planets -- there's like a golybillion. And everyone knows that infinity less a golybillion is a whopping sum, so your error is truly is staggering proportions.

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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[onedotzero]

Agreed. If there were infinite planets, there would be infinite stars. Thus, any point you look at in the sky would end up at a star if there were nothing in the way.

The Universe is not infinite, because the sky is dark at night.

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[Control Group]

Olber's Paradox isn't necessarily a problem. It's only a problem if you assume a macroscopically homogeneous universe that has been around forever.

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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[Dragonslicer]

The universe is infinite, but the number of planets certainly isn't.

I believe that's only true if the portion of the universe that contains planets is finite. Let's say 1/10 of the universe contains planets (because it's too early in the morning for large numbers). 1/10 of infinity is still infinity. Of course, since we essentially have no idea what "infinite" means in the context of the universe, nothing we say about it can be considered even close to accurate.

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[zippthorne]

Who says the universe is infinite?

Re:I can prove there is no life on any other plane

[Dunbal]

How many planets are out there? Infinite.
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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[Dunbal]

Still it would be nice to know what that wait limit is, for those of us who don't post all the time

      It's around 20 mins for anonymous posts. 2 minutes if you are logged in.

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[Dunbal]

You could have infinite planets, with NOT ONE supporting life

      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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[MLease]

Especially if they're overladies!

-Mike

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[Legion303]

That line puzzled me as well. I can even see life such as that which lives in thermal vents living in that planet's atmosphere.