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Extrasolar methane and water. Life?   11-14>|


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StellareMar 19, 7:56pm
Today Hubblesite/NASA/ESA announced that a group of scientists from Europe and US had found methane - an organic compound - on an extrasolar planet. Earlier in March traces of water was reported also extrasolar. Is it likely that this is the first proof of the possibility of life on other planets? Personally, I think the evidence do not suffice for that, but I find it extraordinary that we can "see" gases so far away with our outstanding telescopes. What are your thoughts on the matter? :-)

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WayneSmallmanMar 20, 5:34am
My feeling is, with the abundance of "extremophiles" found here on Earth, life is an inevitability.

Recently, research suggests cold conditions are more favourable than warm for the creation of life's building blocks.

I think our next leap of understanding will be how we define life...

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VortexfugueMar 20, 8:30am
Except that we don't yet know how easy or hard it is for life to originate from non-life, since we have only one sample. Life may be extremely durable, but we don't yet know the degree of conditions necessary for the origination of life.

qthewsMar 20, 12:16pm
I go with the simple idea from "Contact" (the book, not the movie :-) ) that such a big universe and no life would be a too big waste of "space" to be true.
And i even add intelligent to that idea. No i don't think that we have ufos and aliens around every cloud and corner, i'm more of the idea that we are mostly out of "range" from each other.

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DeepSixMar 20, 1:04pm
4: I could have sworn that exact idea was also stated in the movie...perhaps one just doesn't want to be associated with it?

qthewsMar 20, 1:17pm
#5 yes, it's only that, even if i liked a lot the movie, i really loved the book and i really can't stop saying that every time i speak about it.

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VortexfugueMar 20, 3:50pm
I think life is probably prevalent in the universe, but so far we just don't know. In any case, I doubt the universe is in a position to go, "hey, there is just so much space around so there has just got to be lots of life". It does not follow from lots of space that there must therefore be lots of life.

Cool article in the latest Scientific American (Apr) about what color plants would be on planets around other stars. Around F-type stars plants would most usually be blue, around K-type stars plants would most usually be red, and around M-type stars they'd most usually be black. Neat stuff. Oh, yeah, we G-type stars get that pretty green plant color.

mrstarstuffMar 25, 2:01pm
#7 is correct..it does not follow that 'more space = more life', but more stars implies more habitable planets; and logic follows that if life could form from carbon compounds here, it would elsewhere. The number of stars in the universe is so large as to exceed the capacity of our imagination. So, the idea that life only formed here over the previous 13 billion years violates logic.

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tonyenkiducxMar 26, 7:11am
While it's true that the amount of stars pretty much guarantees life exists elsewhere(As I've argued before), until we find a single life form on another planet outside our solar system there is no actual guarantee. It's extremely unlikely that there isn't, but who knows what kicked off that first spark of life? Maybe the conditions were so mind bendingly specific that the chances of there being other life is almost none-existant?

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VortexfugueMar 26, 8:56am
9. Exactly. Since we have only one sample, we don't yet have any idea how complex the necessary conditions are for life to originate.


Extrasolar methane and water. Life?   11-14>|