[release]Somewhere in the Milky Way, astronomers have found a world that sports crucial ingredients for life. When they trained a high-resolution spectrograph on starlight reflected from the planet's moon, they picked up traces of ozone, oxygen, sodium, and nitrogen. Alas, the planet is Earth. But the researchers say a similar technique could be used to find signatures of life on planets orbiting other stars.
Astronomers have discovered hundreds of planets beyond our solar system, but they know very little about them. Telescopic surveys usually reveal just basic information about an extrasolar planet's minimum mass, its distance from its parent star, and whether it is likely to be gassy or rocky, like Earth.
[url=http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/assets_c/2010/07/sn-extrasolar-thumb-autox600-3906.jpg][img]http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/assets_c/2010/07/sn-extrasolar-thumb-200xauto-3906.jpg[/img][/url]
[b]Not quite Earth.[/b] An artist's impression of the hot Jupiter planet HD 209458b transiting in front of its parent star, some 150 light-years away in the constellation of Pegasus.
To learn more about these alien worlds, astronomers have taken advantage of a phenomenon called stellar occultation. When a planet transits, or passes between its star and Earth, components of the planet's atmosphere subtract some wavelengths from the star's light and add others. By training a spectrograph on this light, scientists can tease out the composition of the planet's atmosphere. In 2001, astronomers led by David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, used the technique to detect sodium in the atmosphere of a "hot Jupiter" orbiting a star 150 light-years from Earth.
But no one knew if the approach would work with a much smaller, Earthlike world. Astrophysicist Alfred Vidal-Madjar and colleagues at the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris decided to test the idea on the most Earthlike world they could find: Earth. To treat Earth like an extrasolar planet, the researchers looked at the sunlight filtered through Earth's atmosphere during a partial lunar eclipse in 2008. In a lunar eclipse, Earth passes between the sun and the moon. The moon's-eye view of sunlight when that happens best replicates what can be seen when an extrasolar planet passes in front of its parent star, says Vidal-Madjar.
Using SOPHIE, a high-resolution spectrograph attached to the Observatoire de Haute Provence's 1.93-meter telescope in southern France, the researchers successfully detected ozone, oxygen, nitrogen, and sodium in the reflected light from Earth's atmosphere. "The surprise was that we succeeded with extremely sparse observations under relatively bad weather conditions," Vidal-Madjar says. "But seeing how easily oxygen was seen strongly argues in favor of high-spectral-resolution searches [of Earthlike extrasolar planets]." The team reports its findings in a paper accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
"This is an important paper," Charbonneau says. "Many of us have great hopes for the use of this method to make the first honest search for life outside the solar system." That's going to be tricky, says planetary scientist James Kasting of Pennsylvania State University, University Park. "The [French team] has done a nice job," he says, "but it is very difficult to get a transit spectrum of an Earthlike planet in the habitable zone of its parent star." The problem, Kasting notes, is that Earthlike worlds would have thin atmospheres, which would be hard to detect, and their small size makes them harder to catch during an occultation.
Those odds may improve if the European Space Agency launches its PLATO (Planetary Transits and Oscillations of Stars) mission in 2017, which should give astronomers a complete atlas of transiting planets within some 300 light-years. Vidal-Madjar says he and colleagues will be waiting to see if they'll have as much luck with these planets as they've had with Earth.
[/release]
Awesome, we won't travel or be able to use this in hundreds of years, but still awesome. :science:
The title has nothing at all to do with anything in that article. They looked at earth during an occultation by the moon to get a baseline reading of spectrographic properties of a planet currently supporting life. Also, HD 209458b is a fucking gas giant.
Interesting application of spectrometry, though, being able to use Earth as a baseline would be a great help in looking for life out there.
I hope if they do find a habitable planet the race for traveling throught space at insane speeds begins.
[QUOTE=Canary;23588232]I hope if they do find a habitable planet the race for traveling throught space at insane speeds begins.[/QUOTE]
What like Mars, Europa and Titan.
We can live anywhere with the right technology.
And they have already found a few ocean worlds that would do the job like Gliese 581
[url]http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/2703/serious-candidate-ocean-planet-found[/url]
[QUOTE=Kagrenak;23587992]The title has nothing at all to do with anything in that article.[/QUOTE]
It was the title of the article, what can I do, make a new one with my -50 Img?
It's sad that I will be dead when this happens :(
I dont believe this until there is actual prove. would be cool tho
[QUOTE=Vendetta1989;23590563]I dont believe this until there is actual prove. would be cool tho[/QUOTE]
It's difficult to prove that a planet is an extra solar capture.
It has to be unique in composition and the like for a solar system, because I assume there must be base elements and chemical compositions for planets of a solar system.
Thats pretty awesome.
If we find intelligent life, we should just tell them to get over here and share their secrets of space travel with us.
Unless they, you know, blow us all up.
Or unless they are as evolved as us and don't know shit about long space travel ?
[editline]08:41PM[/editline]
You should stop all the fantasy about a superior form of life somewhere in the galaxy, if there is another form of life somewhere, there is a lot of chances they are as evolved as us.
[QUOTE=z0nk3d;23594768]Or unless they are as evolved as us and don't know shit about long space travel ?
[editline]08:41PM[/editline]
You should stop all the fantasy about a superior form of life somewhere in the galaxy, if there is another form of life somewhere, [B]there is a lot of chances they are as evolved as us.[/B][/QUOTE]
Oh look someone else who doesn't understand evolution.
Why didn't we stay as micro organisms?
They are incredibly efficient.
Why didn't we stay are herbivores? cause being an omnivore is far less efficient.
Dude, the chances of them looking like us are about the same as a double decker bus spontaneously appearing in my ass.
Also evolution has little to no bearing on technology, more evolved =/= more technologically advanced.
You didn't get the point.
Look at how much time we took to evolve, I don't mean only from humans, I mean from the very first cell ever.
If some other intelligent specie exist somewhere, I doubt it will be very more evolved than us, it will probably be as developed, or a slightly bit more, but nothing enough to handle long space travel and other stuff like that.
I don't say they will look like us, just their civilization won't probably be more developed than ours.
that doesn't make sense there is no timer on evolution it can happen at any random pace
For sure, but I think there aren't a lot of chances that any evolution appeared very earl enough to have a big technological advance on us.
yes there are
considering our planet's had it's life wiped multiple times we could easily be behind someone
plus technology advances exponentially so tiny headstarts make huge differences
[QUOTE=Kagrenak;23587992]The title has nothing at all to do with anything in that article. They looked at earth during an occultation by the moon to get a baseline reading of spectrographic properties of a planet currently supporting life. Also, HD 209458b is a fucking gas giant.
Interesting application of spectrometry, though, being able to use Earth as a baseline would be a great help in looking for life out there.[/QUOTE]
Not wanting to sound like a boring shit, but I think it's spectroscopy. :v:
Wait, so we reflected our atmospheric spectrum off the moon to see what an extrasolar planet would look spectral-wise?
I didn't think the moon was that reflective. This is really cool.
[QUOTE=z0nk3d;23594963]You didn't get the point.
Look at how much time we took to evolve, I don't mean only from humans, I mean from the very first cell ever.
If some other intelligent specie exist somewhere, I doubt it will be very more evolved than us, it will probably be as developed, or a slightly bit more, but nothing enough to handle long space travel and other stuff like that.
I don't say they will look like us, just their civilization won't probably be more developed than ours.[/QUOTE]
Then don't use the term evolution, since you aren't talking about evolution.
And from single cells to multi cellular organisms wasn't difficult, all it took was eukaryotic cells to jump into the scene and make use of the oxygen in the atmosphere.
[QUOTE=z0nk3d;23595064]For sure, but I think there aren't a lot of chances that any evolution appeared very earl enough to have a big technological advance on us.[/QUOTE]
Any species we shall meet will appear to us as either gods or savages.
[QUOTE=ExplodingGuy;23595257]Wait, so we reflected our atmospheric spectrum off the moon to see what an extrasolar planet would look spectral-wise?
I didn't think the moon was that reflective. This is really cool.[/QUOTE]
If you can see it, it's reflective, it shines on clear nights when the suns light strikes it.
[QUOTE=bravehat;23594905]
Dude, the chances of them looking like us are about the same as a double decker bus spontaneously appearing in my ass.
[/QUOTE]
Suddenly, out of nowhere, Bravehat ended up dead due to a two storey bus appearing randomly inside his anus.
[QUOTE=bravehat;23595347]If you can see it, it's reflective, it shines on clear nights when the suns light strikes it.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, but I didn't think it had a high enough albedo to reflect with enough resolution to gain spectral data.
[QUOTE=papaya;23595502]Suddenly, out of nowhere, Bravehat ended up dead due to a two storey bus appearing randomly inside his anus.[/QUOTE]
So you're saying you think they will evolve along the exact same evolutionary path?
Including their early planet evolving dinosaurs and having the same fauna and flora as our planet at all times and being pretty much a copy of ours?
If that happens you can reanimate my rotten corpse and I will swallow my own testicles.
shit, prediction of time till discovery: 10 years
Time till Colonization: 200 years
:what:
The thing is, by the time we see these planets beyond our galaxy, they could already be gone.
[QUOTE=Jabberwocky;23607573]The thing is, by the time we see these planets beyond our galaxy, they could already be gone.[/QUOTE]
We haven't seen any planets outside our galaxy. You mean our solar system. While you may be right, the chances of some of these "nearby" planets being gone already are very low.
[QUOTE=Mexican;23595093]yes there are
considering our planet's had it's life wiped multiple times we could easily be behind someone
plus technology advances exponentially so tiny headstarts make huge differences[/QUOTE]
Isn't it possible that another planet had it's life wiped multiple times, too?
Aliens aren't exactly going to be time controlling greys with warp systems and crazy crap like that.
Actually, I half expect that when we do finally land somewhere, on some alien planet, we'll find a bunch of creatures living in their version of a medieval time.
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