{"id":2402,"date":"2008-03-20T07:28:59","date_gmt":"2008-03-20T07:28:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/03\/20\/theres-methane-in-them-thar-pl\/"},"modified":"2008-03-20T07:28:59","modified_gmt":"2008-03-20T07:28:59","slug":"theres-methane-in-them-thar-pl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/03\/20\/theres-methane-in-them-thar-pl\/","title":{"rendered":"There’s Methane in Them Thar Planets"},"content":{"rendered":"

The coolest-sounding science news of the moment is undoubtedly “Hubble Finds First Organic Molecule on an Exoplanet”<\/a>“<\/p>\n

\n

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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Of course, that sounds a little more dramatic and impressive than the reality: they used absorption spectroscopy of the plent’s atmosphere to detect the presence of methane in its atmosphere. Now, technically, methane is<\/strong> an organic molecule, but if you stick “organic molecule” into a headline, most people are going to think of complex hydrocarbon chains and that sort of thing.<\/p>\n

That doesn’t mean it’s not an impressive result– it is. It’s pretty amazing that they’re able to get this information at all. I continue to be very impressed at the ingenuity of astronomers. And also at their boundless capacity for surprise:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

The astronomers were surprised to find that the planet has more methane than predicted by conventional models for “hot Jupiters.” “This indicates we don’t really understand exoplanet atmospheres yet,” said [JPL’s Mark] Swain.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You know, at this point, after however many dozens of extrasolar planet detections that completely confound the current models of these systems, I think I’d only be surprised if a result did<\/strong> match the predictions of the conventional model…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The coolest-sounding science news of the moment is undoubtedly “Hubble Finds First Organic Molecule on an Exoplanet”“ 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… Continue reading There’s Methane in Them Thar Planets<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,33,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy","category-in_the_news","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}