DailyDirt: Water, Water, Everywhere... In The Universe?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Water is an essential substance for life (as we know it), so it's not too surprising that as we look for evidence of extraterrestrial life, we often start by looking for signs of water. (We also look for water on places like the moon because locations near water/ice would be nice if we ever want to build a lunar base.) Here are just a few links on finding water in our solar system and beyond.

• NASA has released its tentative plans for the next 30 years, and its goals are to answer 3 questions: Are we alone? How did we get here? And how does the universe work? Upcoming telescopes will be looking for exoplanets and may be able to detect atmospheres on distant worlds. [url]
• Stardust is mostly made up of silicates floating in space, and when these dust particles encounter solar wind (charged hydrogen ions), water can form from these interplanetary dust particles. Assuming similar stardust exists in other star systems, water and the basic ingredients for life as we know it might exist throughout the universe. [url]
• The Herschel space observatory has detected water spewing from the dwarf planet Ceres (located in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter). The European Space Agency (ESA) reports that Ceres has a very thin water vapor atmosphere, and this is evidence of an icy surface. NASA's Dawn mission is scheduled to visit Ceres in 2015, so we might get a closer look in the near future. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: astrobiology, ceres, et, extraterrestrial life, herschel telescope, interplanetary dust particles, space, stardust, water
Companies: esa, nasa