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Space NASA Science

Molecular Basis for Life Found on Extrasolar Planet 89

Posted by Zonk from the i-wonder-if-they-get-the-internet-in-space dept.
DarkProphet writes "NASA scientists have discovered the first evidence of organic molecules on an extrasolar planet. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, they detected trace amounts of methane on a swirling gas giant about 63 light-years from our own planet. Being a gas giant, there's almost no chance this discovery represents extrasolar life. A unique find, just the same. 'HD 189733b, a so-called "hot Jupiter," located 63 light years away, has proven a boon for scientists studying exoplanets. Its large size and proximity to its star mean that it dims the star's light more than any other known exoplanet. Combine that with its home star's high brightness, and scientists find that the system creates the best viewing conditions of any known extrasolar system. At different wavelengths, every atom and molecule has its own telltale footprint, so scientists can convert what are known as absorption spectra into the chemical composition of the object they're looking at.'"
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Molecular Basis for Life Found on Extrasolar Planet More

Molecular Basis for Life Found on Extrasolar Planet

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  • I'm not surprised... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PC and Sony Fanboy ( 1248258 ) on Thursday March 20, 2008 @12:31PM (#22808648) Journal
    Someone was bound to find something eventually. If the universe is as big as we seem to think it is, it was bound to happen eventually. Who knows, maybe some of those religious guys might be right. Too bad it would simply be accidental ;)

  • Well... (Score:3, Funny)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Thursday March 20, 2008 @12:34PM (#22808686) Homepage
    just beam a high power radio signal that way and if your lucky in 124 years you might get a 'hello there' back.

    Actually it would be pretty cool to establish contact with an alien civilization even if there is a 250 year lag. Just ask a question and your great-great-great-grandchildren might get an answer, "No we haven't developed hyperlightspeed propulsion yet either".

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Joe The Dragon ( 967727 )
      or we can just use the stargate and go there.
    • God, Imagine playing CS:S with them. Of course, if the answer is "yes" then they'll be landing minutes after you send the message.
    • PING HD189733b (194.109.192.166) 56(84) bytes of data.

      64 bytes from 194.109.192.166: icmp_seq=1 ttl=128 time=3910464584102.499 ms

      --- 194.109.192.166 ping statistics ---

      1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 3910464584102.499ms

  • I've heard many times of the extraordinary odds against life even existing in the universe. Yet, here we are and some still try to prove that it's impossible for themselves to exist. It's unfortunate that life is likely so prevalent in the universe but really really difficult to bridge the gap and make contact, even at the speed of light.
     

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )
      It is extraordinary odd that any life exists, fortunately there is lots of time and space.

    • I've heard many times of the extraordinary odds against life even existing in the universe. Yet, here we are and some still try to prove that it's impossible for themselves to exist. It's unfortunate that life is likely so prevalent in the universe but really really difficult to bridge the gap and make contact, even at the speed of light.

      If you believe in evolution then, yes, the odds are basically more than astronomical and applying those odds to another place in the universe and expecting something to evolve again is just ludicrous. I think my sig applies very well in this regard. If life didn't begin evolving more than once (i.e. 2+ origins of life) on Earth where, if you think like an evolutionist, the conditions are supposedly perfect then it has less of a chance (if that is even possible to be less than it already was for Earth) of

      • Regarding your sig, isn't every species essentially a different evolutionary tract in a varying stage? If not, what would qualify for your criteria of being different? Silicon-based lifeforms?
         

        • Regarding your sig, isn't every species essentially a different evolutionary tract in a varying stage? If not, what would qualify for your criteria of being different? Silicon-based lifeforms?

          I don't mean the basis for the life form (carbon vs silicon vs whatever) but the origin. What I mean is why aren't there multiple parallel tracts having *different* origins? The tracts that supposedly exist are all based on a single organic origin (where ever that was), not multiple, therefore evolution only kicked into gear once (with not even a sign of any failings to suggest multiple tries but with only a single success). So if evolution is possible and if we are here because it occurred once already t

          • That ones easy, "life" (ie collections of reproducing molecules) developed once somehow and then out competed all later/other types of life for resources. I mean some little molecule thats something near alive can form in this room right now but its not gunna get enough "food" because me and my bacteria friends are going to be far better at getting, keeping, and utilizing those resources. Thats the nontechnical answer.

            • That ones easy, "life" (ie collections of reproducing molecules) developed once somehow and then out competed all later/other types of life for resources. I mean some little molecule thats something near alive can form in this room right now but its not gunna get enough "food" because me and my bacteria friends are going to be far better at getting, keeping, and utilizing those resources. Thats the nontechnical answer.

              And do you have proof of this easy answer? The problem is somewhere a little molecule that *is* alive can form somewhere and it *does* get enough food. Bacteria mutate into other types of bacteria all the time *and* they survive to wreak havoc for people who create antibiotics for reach strain so what is so different about life forms originating out of the soup multiple times many years ago? You aren't consistent.

              • No of course I don't have proof, I have a reasonable explanation for what we observe around us (life seems to have originated from one original alive thing). The event you're proposing may very well happen (or could have happened already but noone noticed), but I don't think it would be very likely due to reasons stated above. And bacteria surviving is a completely different thing, they are far more complex and efficient than anything thats going to form spontaneously, even the new life forms ancestors 1 mi

  • Wasn't it already posted on Slashdot a while ago?

    http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/12/1414257 [slashdot.org]

  • just to highlight (Score:5, Informative)

    by ionix5891 ( 1228718 ) on Thursday March 20, 2008 @12:36PM (#22808730)
    they found methane which is quite common in our solar system, its not that they found methane being present thats is the breakthrough here, its the fact that they have fine enough instruments to measure a planet ~60 light years away, this absolutely amazing! fairplay!!

    the planet in question is bigger than Jupiter and closer to its sun than mercury, so its way too hot for any life "as we know it" to survive

  • Been over this before (Score:5, Funny)

    by explosivejared ( 1186049 ) <hagan.jaredNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday March 20, 2008 @12:36PM (#22808736)
    We just went over [slashdot.org] this exact occurrence just a month ago. Go ahead with the flatulence jokes all the same though, it would be a break of tradition if you didn't.

    • We just went over this exact occurrence just a month ago. Go ahead with the flatulence jokes all the same though, it would be a break of tradition if you didn't.


      Meh, no jokes from me. Your comment has left my humor deflated.

  • Headline is misleading (Score:5, Informative)

    by hcg50a ( 690062 ) on Thursday March 20, 2008 @12:37PM (#22808744) Journal
    The big deal, according to the article, is that they were able to detect it for the first time, not that it was discovered. It is expected to be present.

    Here's a quote from one of the workers:

    If we were able to detect [methane] on a more hospitable planet in the future, it would really be something exciting.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by esocid ( 946821 )
      The big deal with it is that they now have a proven method for using spectrum analysis to determine the presence of organic molecules. From the actual research paper:

      As these bands can overlap in wavelength, and the corresponding signatures from them are weak, decisive identification requires precision infrared spectroscopy. Here we report a near-infrared transmission spectrum of the planet HD 189733b that shows the presence of methane.

      Here is the abstract [nature.com].

    • It looks like somebody read TFA. Turn your card in at the door.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by d3l33t ( 1106803 )
      http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2007-12/release.shtml [caltech.edu] NASA's Spitzer Finds Water Vapor on Hot, Alien Planet For Release: July 11, 2007

  • Same old hype (Score:3, Interesting)

    by l2718 ( 514756 ) on Thursday March 20, 2008 @12:40PM (#22808772)
    The ability to resolve the spectral lines is a great advance. The hype is getting old. We know that small "organic" molecules are not hard to come by; we expect to find them everywhere we look, yet the press goes ape whenever we find them. Worse, since we have no idea what "life" is, it seems a bit odd to go crazy over molecules that are somewhat related to our kind of "life".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by us7892 ( 655683 )
      Agreed, same old hype. Save it for when you can actually announce that "we discovered an alien being on a distant planet".

      Of course, the wack-jobs believe this already happened, and the government is keeping it a secret. That's for another day...

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Fatalis ( 892735 )

      ... since we have no idea what "life" is ...

      please, speak for yourself, there's a myriad of biologists that'd like to disagree with this assessment. we have a pretty good idea about what exactly life is, unless you're still stuck in the days of vitalism or whatever

  • Now, oxygen, on the other hand... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Loke the Dog ( 1054294 ) on Thursday March 20, 2008 @12:42PM (#22808808)
    Well, it's cool that we can find proof of any kind of molecules on extrasolar planets, but I'm still waiting for the discovery of O2 on an extra solar planet, that will be the discovery of the century. Methane is not so cool.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Belial6 ( 794905 )
      Agreed. If we found a planet that had an abundance of O2, and was even close to our temperature and light levels, I would be suprised if there wasn't life. And if there wasn't life, it would be trivial to transplant it there.
      • Ok, it would still be hard to physically get there, but what we got there would likely grow.

      • Re:Now, oxygen, on the other hand... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by mog007 ( 677810 ) <[Mog007] [at] [gmail.com]> on Thursday March 20, 2008 @01:30PM (#22809486)
        The first lifeforms on our own planet didn't use O2 for respiration. It took a very, very, very long time for the Earth's original atmosphere to be converted to the 70% nitrogen, 20% oxygen atmosphere we're comfortable breathing now. Even today we have a very popular organism that doesn't require O2 to function, and the wonderful result of lacking O2 is ethanol.

        Liquid water is the smoking gun for life forms, and maybe some serious carbon.

        • Re:Now, oxygen, on the other hand... (Score:4, Informative)

          by wizardforce ( 1005805 ) on Thursday March 20, 2008 @01:50PM (#22809812) Journal
          photosynthesis produces oxygen as a waste product. when oxygen levels in the air became sufficient, it resulted in what is called the oxygen catastrophe because oxygen is quite poisonous to many anaerobic organisms. finding oxygen in the presence of reducing chemicals like methane signals that there is an active process for making oxygen and reducing chemicals and one of the best ways to do this is with active life.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mog007 ( 677810 )
            That sounds reasonable, but the post I was referring to didn't seem to imply that methane would have been as big a deal as molecular oxygen, and I would disagree that molecular oxygen would be completely meaningless by itself. I'd be more interested in liquid water than either oxygen or the so called "organic molecules".
        • Congratulations. You read some articles. For a second, I thought you had invented a Time Machine and discovered this amazing fact on your own. Instead, you seem to be expelling hot methane rather than being an authority on early Earth history.

          How does this stuff get modded up in the first place?

        • The first lifeforms on our own planet didn't use O2 for respiration. It took a very, very, very long time for the Earth's original atmosphere to be converted to the 70% nitrogen, 20% oxygen atmosphere we're comfortable breathing now. Even today we have a very popular organism that doesn't require O2 to function, and the wonderful result of lacking O2 is ethanol.

          I assume when you say "very, very, very long time" you mean millions or billions of years. The problem is that various geological (surface and sub-surface) formations show quick, catastrophic development (erosion specifically) measured over periods of days or months, not slow erosion measured over billions of years.

          Coal seams, which are always flat, also indicate rapid (days/months) development. In that case the rapid development prevented slow erosion over billions of years from ever taking place which

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mog007 ( 677810 )
            Yes, I do mean billions of years. About four billion. And I wasn't aware of any such studies on coal seams that would be developed in days or months, instead of centuries or millenia. To be fair, I don't really follow geology, but the amount that I am familiar with, tectonic plates, and continental drift. From all the evidence I've read about, Pangaea is about a quarter of a billion years old, and gave way to the continents we're familiar with today, but as I stated, Geology isn't a big priority in my re

  • Dup (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Bob-taro ( 996889 )
    This is a duplicate [slashdot.org] from over a month ago.
  • I bet the Slylandro beg to differ.
    • Oh no, not the probes! There is nothing more unreasonable than a Slylandro probe.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by v1 ( 525388 )
      Being a gas giant, there's almost no chance this discovery represents extrasolar life

      considering how regularly we find life in places our usual view of where life can survive don't work, like around geothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean, or inside solid rock 2 miles below the surface, I find this comment incredibly narrow-minded. That gas giant is about on keel with the ocean here on earth, and last I checked, life here began in the seas.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )
        [Being a gas giant, there's almost no chance this discovery represents extrasolar life] Considering how regularly we find life in places our usual view of where life can survive don't work, like around geothermal vents

        Note that some of Jupiter's chemicals may be biology-produced. We just don't know at this stage. If bacteria can live in Earth's atmosphere, then it can probably live in Jupiter's. There are a variety of temperatures in Jupiter's atmosphere; the further you go down, the warmer it gets. This

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by v1 ( 525388 )
          well again though, even limiting yourself to water, although water IS a nice, biologically-friendly element, having a neutral PH as it does, it's certainly not required. Then we just get back to the idea of trying to increase our odds of finding something by looking for a place that is more likely.

          I suppose what I'm saying comes down to just this: to say that any location is inhospitable to life, is a mistake which the dice will eventually beat you at. Just to have genesis from nothing at all to begin wit
  • There is nothing unusual about methane being detected in the atmosphere of a gas giant, what is unusual is the fact that carbon monoxide is supposed to be more abundant than methane at this temperature. Of course we knew about this over a month ago... btw, methane without water or ammonia or any number of other chemicals required for abiogenesis is utterly unremarkable, they make it sounds like they found DNA in the atmosphere or something equally amazing... sheesh
  • It isn't necessarily biologically produced. But any chemical involving carbon and hydrogen is called 'organic' even if it is inorganic in origin.

  • "We found methane gas..." => "Molecular basis for life..."?

    Political double-speak is the cause of the polarization problem in communicating science, not the solution.

    How about just sticking with "We can detect methane gas on an extra-solar planet"? Isn't that cool enough by itself? Nobody on either side of the debate has problems with repeatable observations. But instead, every discovery is used as a club to beat the Big Bang or Evolution over the head of creationists, whether it has anything to d

    • ohes noes, teh poor lil creationists, they are the victims of the evil scientists. WTF? This has absolutely nothing to do with evolution/creation, if you think it is some covert attack on creationists, you are either paranoid or more likely just looking for yet another excuse to paint yourself as a victim.

      The motivation is simple sensationalism, molecules of life sounds cooler than methane, thats it.


      Now go home and well call you when some redneck school board bans evolution teaching, then you can
    • Polarization isnt bad in your cited example. I find it fun to watch religious idiots disagree with science and get disproven every few dozen years. Then watch them all recant their views. I didn't see anything on that site about how the earth is flat and science is ignoring that. Or that the earth is the center of the universe. I guess they just forgot to mention that.
    • There is lots of evidence, just look around you.

      Clearly life in the universe exists, Us. There is no reason, religious or otherwise that life can't exist elsewhere. Only closed minded fools.

      Why that site is crap.

      Here is one example:
      "The story we have all heard from movies, television, newspapers, and most magazines and textbooks is that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago. According to evolutionists, the dinosaurs 'ruled the Earth' for 140 million years, dying out about 65 million years ago. However, scie
  • Can someone explain to me why this might not be simply the spectra of methane occurring anywhere in interstellar space between the star emitting the light and the measuring device. Do these guys *only* see the methane spectra when the planet transits it's star. Do we never see methane if we look in any other direction ?

  • At different wavelengths, every atom and molecule has its own telltale footprint...
    You mean, atom and molecule and yeti?
    They should adjust their filters to look for those telltale footprints, too.
  • Ok now that we are here let talk about the meaning of light years for the one who want to know about this. If we were to travel that far in a spaceship what would happen? How will the person or people's that may want to take the trip be, what will they ages be will be the same as on earth or do time change things in space. We know 60's some light year but do it mean the time that we have here on earth or the times that it will be when they get to the spot where the plant et will be? If some want to give so

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