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from the still-less-vapor-than-the-phantom-console dept.
kef writes:
"Water vapor has been detected in the atmosphere of exo-planet Tau Boötis b, which was was discovered in 1996 and is just 51 light years away. From the article:
To analyze the atmosphere surrounding Tau Boötis b, scientists looked at its faint glow. Different types of molecules emit different wavelengths of light, resulting in signatures known as spectra that reveal their chemical identity.
Scientists have used spectrographic analyses to find water signatures on other alien planets before, but only when those worlds passed in front of their parent stars. Tau Boötis b does not transit in front of its parent star from our viewpoint on Earth, but Lockwood and colleagues were able to tease out the weak light emitted by the planet using the Near Infrared Echelle Spectrograph (NIRSPEC) at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii."
[ED note: The findings were published in The Astrophysical Journal (paywalled), but they are also freely viewable on Arxiv.]
(Score: 1) by Jerry Smith on Saturday March 01 2014, @08:28PM
If you don't mind a little moonshine-quality booze... http://phys.org/news63346824.html [phys.org]
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.