Carbon Dioxide Detected on Faraway World

[n2doc]

By Robert Roy Britt, Editorial Director
posted: 23 November 2008 03:57 pm ET

Carbon dioxide, a potential fingerprint of life, has been discovered for the first time in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star.

However, the planet, HD 189733b, is too hot to be habitable.

But the discovery nonetheless has scientists excited, because carbon dioxide is one of four chemicals that life can generate, so being able to detect it shows that astronomers have the ability to find the signs of life on other worlds.

"This is the first detection of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet, which means that three of the Big Four biomarkers for habitable/inhabited worlds have now been seen: water, methane, and now carbon dioxide," explained Alan Boss, a planet-formation theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington who was not involved in the finding. "The only one that has not yet been detected is oxygen/ozone."

Boss told SPACE.com that the detections provide "proof of concept" for what astronomers would search for in looking at an Earth-like world. The detection of carbon dioxide, Boss said, was made with a low degree of resolving power, the sort that could be provided by NASA's planned Terrestrial Planet Finder.

more:

http://www.livescience.com/space/081123-planet-carbon-dioxide.html

Comment: We're getting close, folks. I fully expect that we will detect strong signs of life around another planet within the next 20 years...unless we blow it by destroying ourselves in the meantime. I suspect a good novel could be made over the prospect of a race between finding/proving life is elsewhere and our trying to blow ourselves up in some useless war over which "god" is stronger....or more likely, shutting all science down because we spent all our $$$ buying useless CDI's from Citi....

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. Divine Matrix, why shouldn't there be life almost everywhere?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjM9JhzlXR0&NR=1

[Warren Stupidity]

5. Because if there was we would know about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

intelligent life appears to be rather a rare beast with a limited lifespan.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

9. Great wiki... prime directive, I like that.... now take a look at

this crop circle and tell me a couple of college kids did it.

There ain't no freaking way, check the circular binary code and the 3D molecule at the end. If this is man made I'll eat my hat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KoR2t-iM9k&feature=related

[xchrom]

2. recommend -- this is wonderful news and we don't what will be found where.

:toast: to the surprises we will surely find.

[Warpy]

3. I think the theory that life is an artifact of most planets

is the correct one and limiting the search for it to earthly forms is dooming us to failure since all we can now detect directly are gas giant planets, bigger than Jupiter.

This is still an exciting time to be alive for anyone with the slightest bit of scientific curiosity.

[joshcryer]

4. The extreme large telescopes that western countries are building will go online in a decade!

We're a lot closer than that! But this is such great news.

[n2doc]

6. It will take some time for those 'scopes to spin up

But yeah, I suspect this is going to be quite an interesting decade for Astronomy.

An aside- I know Alan Boss- he is one of the most brilliant and nicest scientists I have ever met. Rare to find that combination of down to earthness and ability in one person.

[MindMatter]

7. "Too hot for life"? Sez who?

It may be too hot for human-style life. But we have found life on this planet in places where nobody would have expected that possible.

[laconicsax]

8. It's a little past plausible for this planet.

It's a Jupiter sized (actually a little bigger) gas giant that is close enough to its star to complete an orbit every 2 days. The predicted planetary temperature of around 8-900^oC (possibly as high as 1300^oC) is probably too hot for life. Also since it's thought to be tidally locked to its star, one side of the planet will always be facing the sun, being perpetually bombarded with high levels of radiation to go along with 9600 kph winds.

It just seems to be past the point of plausibility.

[MindMatter]

10. That means there is a back side that would be considerably cooler

I'll admit it is unlikely, but so are many organisms that occur here.

[laconicsax]

11. Apparently, the dark side isn't much cooler.

http://gallery.spitzer.caltech.edu/Imagegallery/image.php?image_name=ssc2007-09a

[MindMatter]

12. There are organisms here that thrive at 200 degrees or more

See http://www.yellowstonepark.com/MoreToKnow/ShowNewsDetails.aspx?newsid=185

I agree that 1200 degrees seems unlikely, but who knows? There might be a certain combination of pressure and nutrition that allows something organic to form in those conditions.

[n2doc]

13. True dat

Life as we know it. Maybe not inhospitable for something completely different....