Hubble finds hints of water on 5 alien planets

reply to post by SLAYER69


What I find frustrating (in the find for ET life) is the fact that some people seem to think that because there is no water there, that alien life cannot flourish. Who says that because they don't breathe the same concoction of inhalables or bathe in H2O that there couldn't be a sentient species? Maybe the drink liquid mercury the same way we drink water?

We need to stop limiting life forms of creatures we recognise as H2O and oxygen dwellers. We need to start looking outside le box!


EDIT- I understand the water being present on these worlds; I was just throwing out my 2 cent

Soylent Green Is People

Astronomers can tell what the atmosphere of a planet consists of by analyzing the spectrum of the light of the planet's parent star shining through the atmosphere of those planets (basically, there is a fraction of time that the spectrum changes as the planet transits in front of its star, and that is the time the star is shining through the atmosphere).

So if that's how they can analyze exoplanets, maybe that virtual lack of an atmosphere on the moon is what prevents astronomers from using that same method. Or maybe not. I'm just speculating.

edit on 12/4/2013 by Soylent Green Is People because: (no reason given)

bingo. right answer.

samuel1990
reply to post by SLAYER69

 

What I find frustrating (in the find for ET life) is the fact that some people seem to think that because there is no water there, that alien life cannot flourish. Who says that because they don't breathe the same concoction of inhalables or bathe in H2O that there couldn't be a sentient species? Maybe the drink liquid mercury the same way we drink water?

We need to stop limiting life forms of creatures we recognise as H2O and oxygen dwellers. We need to start looking outside le box!

You can only look for that which you know. We know of no way that mercury would be a solvent like water.

Also water is one of the most abundant things in the universe. Mercury? not nearly as much.

EDIT- I understand the water being present on these worlds; I was just throwing out my 2 cent

edit on 5-12-2013 by samuel1990 because: (no reason given)

Its cool. There are also people trying to figure out if life could use liquid methane (like in the lakes of Titan) in the place of water. The problem with that is everything slows down the lower the temperature. How would you even get life going with chemical reactions taking place at such a glacial pace?

We follow the water because nearly everywhere we look in the universe we find water and we know all life on Earth uses water.

SovereignEve
I recall them mentioning that one of the moons in our own solar system possibly had oceans underneath it's icy exterior. I don't understand why they just don't send out probes and find out for sure, why does it seem it's more interesting finding water particles in an atmosphere of a planet that's 1000 light years away.

~Sovereign

Because it is a huge engineering challenge to send a probe to Jupiter, then have a radiation hardened lander descend to the icey surface of Europa, THEN have a nuclear (it has to be nuclear) powered drill drill through the ice (which we still aren't sure how deep it goes) THEN have a mini-submarine go into the ocean and somehow communicate with the surface lander which communicates with us.

It also would cost about $1-4 billion dollars by most estimates.

Taking spectra of exoplanets with instruments already built is easy by comparison.

Want that mission to happen, write your Congressman to tell them you want NASA's budget increased.

Aliensun
reply to post by SLAYER69

 

Let's see...what was the new instrumentation they put on Hubble that would allow these recent discoveries where none such were made at any point of its tenure since its launch in1990?

None. They just knew where to point it due to other telescopes making discoveries of these worlds. Hubble, contrary to popular belief is not the best exoplanet hunter. It is however one of the best exoplanet analyzers.

OH! I keep forgetting that there is a progression to their tales that they tell us.

It's called science, there's always new understanding as new observations are made with new instruments. Why is that hard for you to understand?