Organic molecules found by Hubble on extrasolar planet
Author: Brandon Zimmerman
NASA press release: NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has made the first detection ever of an organic molecule in the atmosphere of a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting another star. This breakthrough is an important step in eventually identifying signs of life on a planet outside our solar system. The molecule found by Hubble is methane, which under the right circumstances can play a key role in prebiotic chemistry — the chemical reactions considered necessary to form life as we know it. This discovery proves that Hubble and upcoming space missions, such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, can detect organic molecules on planets around other stars by using spectroscopy, which splits light into its components to reveal the “fingerprints” of various chemicals. “This is a crucial stepping stone to eventually characterizing prebiotic molecules on planets where life could exist,” said Mark Swain of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif., who led the team that made the discovery. Swain is lead author of a paper appearing in the March 20 issue of Nature. The discovery comes after extensive observations made in May 2007 with Hubble’s Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS). It also confirms the existence of water molecules in the planet’s atmosphere, a discovery made originally by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope in 2007. “With this observation there is no question whether there is water or not — water is present,” said Swain. The planet now …
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Jesus is future king of earth, repent for his judgement comes. Jesus loves you
@jmic0923 water is essential for carbon based life to flourish, check this article out by copy and pasting these words in google.
NASA-Funded Research Discovers Life Built With Toxic Chemical
@jmic0923 I know this argument already. It makes sense from the logistics side of everything, but I still think it’s incredibly narrow minded.
sorry another viewer argued the same point with me lol. i get what you’re saying.
@StringsCrusader -> For me, after reading about how life forms on our planet, the basic building block we require is water. If a planet is too hot then it becomes impossible to create any form of life as we know it. Therefore trying to look for a possible “alternative” life form that may use another element as it’s building block can end up being a huge waste of time when we could use that time searching for more likely candidates… this is why I think these scientists don’t even bother.
@StringsCrusader
Yep. But i think that they do that :p
@Nickah37 Yeah I know. I’m just saying they should take it into consideration.
@StringsCrusader
That is true, but you have to start somewhere.. So why dont start by looking at Planet’s that have the same conditions as our Earth?
i’d rather not discover new species cause 1 day if we dont get along with them we will have our first war in space… our poor future childrens will suffer..
Lol ,for life,
You dont need the sun, you ddnt need the right temp or w/e…
Before, they said that the ingredients of life is energy from sun and water etc..
Now they’re discovering life in places they didnt expect to have life, like those volcanoes in the ocean, acidic hot springs etc…
They need to think OUT OF THE BOX..
The only reason they think we need water or sun is because,
That is what “WE” need in Earth,
But they don’t know what It’s like outside of earth..
@titaniumweasel which is a very narrow minded view to take… that’s the whole point i’ve been repeating over and over again
. i guess we just misunderstood each others points lol.
@StringsCrusader i’m just trying to say that what he said wasn’t an assumption, he just based his statement on what we know about life.
@titaniumweasel … thanks for basically just repeating back what i just said. i realize that we have no other form of life to use as an example. hence why i said “THINK OUTSIDE OF THE BOX”, because honestly, out of all the planets out there I highly doubt that they’d be similar to us.
@StringsCrusader well, how do we know silicon based lifeforms even exist? What you aren’t seeing is that we don’t know enough about life outside of our world. There is no universal benchmark for which environments can harbor living beings and which ones can’t. It isn’t about being closed minded, it’s just that we don’t know enough. It’s perfectly reasonable for Mr. Scienceguy to use earth’s conditions as a benchmark. He may be wrong, but no one can say that he is for certain.
@titaniumweasel you’re still missing my point. i’m very aware at how life on Earth needs water, and rather moderate temperatures to survive. But who’s to say that extraterrestrials will need the same circumstances? We are carbon based lifeforms… but aliens could easily be silicon based. They’d require different basic needs on their planet for life to survive… What I’ve been trying to tell you, is that people need to open their eyes to new possibilities, think outside the box man…
Fascinating stuff, people. I confess I’m amazed at the news that in-house systems (even at big medical centers, apparently) are often poorly managed. Thinking back to newspaper shops, it’s hard for me to imagine that large medical practices would be less fail-safe; but I hear the comments that say that.
@StringsCrusader The only reason life exists on earth is because of those definitions. We are at pretty much the only place in our solar system where complex life could develop. Any closer, the water boils away, any farther, it all freezes. Yes, water vapor in the atmosphere may still be water, but water vapor is only useful if it eventually comes back down as rain, and that isn’t happening there. Also, water isn’t an indicator of life. One of jupiters moons has water, so does mars and the moon.
@titaniumweasel you still miss my point. he says there can’t be any life on the planet because it’s too hot… yet he’s looking at our definition of what life needs on EARTH to survive and be sustained. Who’s to say that on this planet, an abundant source of methane, and scorching temperatures are just as important as water is to life on Earth. Also, water in the atmosphere is still water… evaporated or not.
@StringsCrusader In the atmosphere. It’s so hot the water just stays evaporated in the atmosphere.
@titaniumweasel he said that there’s significant quantities of water…
@StringsCrusader he isn’t assuming it, he says there can’t be because it’s too hot.
“Are we alone?” that should have never been a question. its obvious. just look at the night sky -_-
It is only logical that there are numerous planets supporting some sort of life and lots of civilizations out there.
If the Creator within the Infinite Universe(s) with Billions of of star systems and galaxies and countless planets in it has, only had this tiny globe we Call Earth, have life on it ,that sure seems like the Biggest waste of space someone can conceive !
LOL NASA likes to stretch the truth. There is no way that they can see the atmosphere of another planet outside of our Solar System. I once heard NASA Scientists say on national television that they have seen to the edge of the universe with the Hubble Telescope. That is the same style of rhetoric the Catholic Church said about the Earth being the center of the universe. What a bunch of small minded fools we have working at NASA.