Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Stargeek SG-1

On the other hand, if the world does go to hell, we might have somewhere to go! Wednesday's Reuters carried the news.
Evidence of water has been detected for the first time in a planet outside our solar system, an astronomer said on Tuesday, a tantalizing find for scientists eager to know whether life exists beyond Earth.

Travis Barman, an astronomer at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, said water vapor has been found in the atmosphere of a large, Jupiter-like gaseous planet located 150 light years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. ...

"I'm very confident," Barman said in an interview. "It's definitely good news because water has been predicted to be present in the atmosphere of this planet and many of the other ones for some time." ...

Scientists searching for signs of life beyond Earth are keen to learn about the presence of water on other planets - both in and beyond our solar system - because water is thought to be fundamental to the existence of life.
Gas giants are unlikely to harbor life although there have been speculations that some sort of life on the level of bacteria could survive, floating in the atmosphere. However, even that would not apply here because of how close this one is to its star: The heat would be too intense and the radiation would likely be such that any organic molecules would be broken apart as fast as they formed. So this tells us nothing directly about whether life is out there - but it does increase the likelihood. As Barman said, his findings
do provide good reason to believe other planets beyond our solar system also have water vapor in their atmospheres.
And the more abundant water is, the more opportunities for life there are.

Footnote: There are more than 200 known extrasolar planets, that is, planets outside our solar system. Which is pretty amazing considering the first confirmed discovery wasn't until 1988.

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