Scientists Found Breathable Oxygen In Another Galaxy For the First Time (vice.com) 37
Astronomers have spotted molecular oxygen in a galaxy far far away, marking the first time that this important element has ever been detected outside of the Milky Way. Motherboard reports: This momentous "first detection of extragalactic molecular oxygen," as it is described in a recent study in The Astrophysical Journal, has big implications for understanding the crucial role of oxygen in the evolution of planets, stars, galaxies, and life. Oxygen is the third most abundant element in the universe, after hydrogen and helium, and is one of the key ingredients for life here on Earth. Molecular oxygen is the most common free form of the element and consists of two oxygen atoms with the designation O2. It is the version of the gas that we humans, among many other organisms, need to breathe in order to live.
Now, a team led by Junzhi Wang, an astronomer at the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, reports the discovery of molecular oxygen in a dazzling galaxy called Markarian 231, located 581 million light years from the Milky Way. The researchers were able to make this detection with ground-based radio observatories. "Deep observations" from the IRAM 30-meter telescope in Spain and the NOEMA interferometer in France revealed molecular oxygen emission "in an external galaxy for the first time," Wang and his co-authors wrote. Motherboard notes that you couldn't just inhale the molecular oxygen found in Markarian 231 like you would the oxygen on Earth. "This is because the oxygen is not mixed with the right abundances of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, methane, and all the other molecules that make Earth's air breathable to humans and other organisms."
Still, the discovery "provides an ideal tool to study" molecular outflows from quasars and other AGNs, the team said in the study. [Markarian 231 has remained a curiosity to scientists for decades because it contains the closest known quasar, a type of hyper-energetic object. Quasars are active galactic nuclei (AGN), meaning that they inhabit the core regions of special galaxies, and they are among the most radiant and powerful objects in the universe.] "O2 may be a significant coolant for molecular gas in such regions affected by AGN-driven outflows," the researchers noted. "New astrochemical models are needed to explain the implied high molecular oxygen abundance in such regions several kiloparsecs away from the center of galaxies."
Now, a team led by Junzhi Wang, an astronomer at the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, reports the discovery of molecular oxygen in a dazzling galaxy called Markarian 231, located 581 million light years from the Milky Way. The researchers were able to make this detection with ground-based radio observatories. "Deep observations" from the IRAM 30-meter telescope in Spain and the NOEMA interferometer in France revealed molecular oxygen emission "in an external galaxy for the first time," Wang and his co-authors wrote. Motherboard notes that you couldn't just inhale the molecular oxygen found in Markarian 231 like you would the oxygen on Earth. "This is because the oxygen is not mixed with the right abundances of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, methane, and all the other molecules that make Earth's air breathable to humans and other organisms."
Still, the discovery "provides an ideal tool to study" molecular outflows from quasars and other AGNs, the team said in the study. [Markarian 231 has remained a curiosity to scientists for decades because it contains the closest known quasar, a type of hyper-energetic object. Quasars are active galactic nuclei (AGN), meaning that they inhabit the core regions of special galaxies, and they are among the most radiant and powerful objects in the universe.] "O2 may be a significant coolant for molecular gas in such regions affected by AGN-driven outflows," the researchers noted. "New astrochemical models are needed to explain the implied high molecular oxygen abundance in such regions several kiloparsecs away from the center of galaxies."
Not breathable (Score:1)
The article specifically states itâ(TM)s not breathable oxygen. Why the clickbait?
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Because there's no breathable oxygen getting to the editors' lungs, and thus none to their brains.
Benefit of the doubt and all that.
Re:Not breathable (Score:5, Interesting)
in TFS it says
"This is because the oxygen is not mixed with the right abundances of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, methane, and all the other molecules that make Earth's air breathable to humans and other organisms."
We (and other animals) don't need CO2 and methane . Plants need the CO2.
The nitrogen (or other relatively inert gas) is needed if we are to be at roughly the same atmospheric pressure, but we could breathe low pressure just oxygen atmosphere.
They tried it on the early spacecraft, it worked but fires were a danger (see Apollo 1)
Re:Not breathable (Score:5, Informative)
You can't inhale pure oxygen over a period of time, even at normal pressures. Reduced pressure sucks too because the alveoli air exchange drops about 20% in the presence of pure molecular oxygen. At normal pressures, breathing pure O2 causes atmospheric-based pneumonia/fluid build up in the lungs over time.
Had the Apollo astronauts been breathing pure O2 for a month or more, we'd have likely seen these same problems in them. They only had a couple of weeks of exposure to such an environment.
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Re: Not breathable (Score:1)
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Would the Hirogen consider Zuck a worthy opponent? Agreed on the fluidic septic tank dimension. Maybe they should have *smelled* the medium of Species 8472's realm before getting Voyager coated in Zuck's smegma?
Somehow I doubt it. They'd flay him with a plasma rifle in about two seconds, maybe igniting the fluid and setting the entire universe aflame.
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The article writers got not clue.
Astronauts breathe low pressure pure oxygen in their suits to get rid of the nitrogen that could form bubbles in case of a leak.
An extra-special discovery... (Score:2)
This is an extra-special discovery: the first breathable oxygen that's not breathable!
Who's to say (Score:3, Interesting)
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True (Score:2)
Well, it's a good thing. It was obvious that Oxygen would exist in other galaxies. But cool they provided absolute proof. Breathable? Nah, that's just the clickbait author, not the actual scientists, saying such bullshit.
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'It was obvious that Oxygen would exist'..'cool they provided absolute proof.'
I agree. But isn't 'had existed' be a more accurate description. Just sayin... What they observed today was before dinosaurs even walked the earth.
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I'm assuming here that by "breathable oxygen" they mean O2 molecules. In that case something needs to be generating it, because that's not a very stable molecule. So this *is* really interesting. I don't know of many non-biological mechanisms to generate O2, and the ones that I do know tend to start with something like hydrogen peroxide, which is itself pretty unstable.
OTOH, since this is "in another galaxy" it may be quite difficult to figure out (and check) the generation mechanism.
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O2 is pretty stable; we'd have a lot of problems if it wasn't...
Is /. the new Digg? (Score:3)
Age old space question (Score:1)
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"Momentous"? (Score:1)
"This is because the oxygen is not mixed with the right abundances of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, methane, and all the other molecules that make Earth's air breathable to humans and other organisms."
So, still Fine Tuned Universe for us.
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So, still Fine Tuned Universe for us.
More likely that we were fine tuned for the pre-existing local environment.
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Though, I'm an advocate of theistic evolution. Most of the heavy lifting being done by a designed genetic algorithm, with occasional possible intervention to address barriers to the goal (which mainline Darwinism doesn't have, yet describing evolution is incoherent without one) presented by Irreducible Complexity, works for me.
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possible intervention to address barriers to the goal (which mainline Darwinism doesn't have)
Actually, that's pretty much the description of evolution. Generate and test. That which doesn't surmount a barrier dies out, leaving space in the environment for those variations that do. Darwin may not have described this process completely, but the commonly accepted description of evolution has evolved since he wrote On the Origin of Species.
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Complex features that are not stepwise survivable. The "explanations" are consistently just appeals to confirmation bias and tautology. "We know it happened randomly with selection, so it happened randomly with selection".
Cladistics will ultimately give us hard numbers on the probability of these transitions, but for most, their response will remain the same. If cladi
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To be more specific, there are large numbers of cases where a barrier could not be surmounted by naturalistic mechanisms, yet it was.
Citation needed.
We may not know exactly what path evolution took, but there are few, if any cases where the elapsed time and possible rates of change don't allow for one or more paths to be valid.
Just because we can't find some biblical chain of 'begats' from you to an ancient proto-ape doesn't disprove the path existing.
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Although, of course, you are free to do the standard response and let us all know you take your science conclusions from lawyers, as long as they put on a black robe and sit on a raised pedestal in Dover.
As you are indeed free to opt-out of your human rights by declaring metaphysical equivalence to apes and other animals. Long term, we're going to hold you to that and apply it to you as you demand, though. Fair warning.
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evolutionnews.org
Yup. You went there. That's enough for me, thanks.
Interstellar Oxygen (Score:3)
Is what they detected. Probably a few molecules per cubic meter.
Oxygen is very reactive with other elements and doesn't last long in higher concentration mixtures. Basically, it rusts things. This is why the detection of molecular oxygen in a planet's atmosphere would be so interesting. To date, the primary mechanism we know of for generating it and maintaining it in significant concentrations (i.e. breathable) is photosynthesis.
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that's what I was thinking was interesting when I read the summary - current oxygen levels on earth are, as I understand it, the end effect of (1) a lot of the carbon is locked underground as fossil fuels etc., and (2) plants "emitting" oxygen as a by-product of their own chemical processes, since oxygen is so reactive, given time everything in the atmosphere would have eventually bound to something else. What is causing any detectable oxygen level in the air if it's not life? Are there any "natural" geol
What, no star wars references yet? (Score:2)
I mean, come on slashdot!
The phrase "galaxy far far away" was explicitly mentioned. And because of how far away it is and the time it would take to reach us, you could infer that we are seeing something as it was a long time ago.
I am just so disappointed.
Too active ... (Score:3)
Markarian 231 is a Seyfert galaxy, emitting strong ultraviolet.
So don't get your hopes up of life as we know it.
Also, aerobic life may be an abberration. Anaerobic life arose first on earth and remained the only life for a very long time.
Overdoing making science relevant (Score:2)
It drives me nuts. There is an increasing tendency to try to make science seem "relevant" to people.
The detection of molecular oxygen is perfectly find science, but it has *nothing* to do with breathing. These are interstellar gas clouds with densities lower than good laboratory vacuums on earth.
Oxygen has been detected long ago, but as individual atoms. Its existence as molecules in these clouds is interesting - but only to people deeply involved in the field. It is unrelated to finding O2 in exopla
incorrect mod (Score:2)
undoing erroneous mod