Carbon Dioxide Detected on Faraway World [View All]

[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....