Time Immortal

This Edmonton Journal piece is a bit misleading.

Astronomers have found organic chemicals on a planet outside our Solar System, a milestone in the hunt for extraterrestrial life. Researchers also identified water in the atmosphere of the so-called alien planet, a world too hot for conditions favourable for life as we understand it.

But the ability of scientists to analyze its atmosphere and detect carbon-based molecules is a crucial feat in efforts to find planets that may harbour extraterrestrial life. Reported today in the journal Nature, the feat makes the alien planet possibly the best understood of the 270 detected so far. It is named HD 189733b and was discovered in 2005 in the constellation Vulpecula, a realm 63 light years from Earth.

The organic chemical in question is methane. The presence of an organic hydrocarbon in a planet’s atmosphere, while interesting, is hardly an indicator of the probability of finding alien life, either on HD 189733 b or on any other planet yet discovered — especially since methane can be created by non-organic sources (and the planet’s atmosphere does have a lot of water vapour in it; if it also had a high carbon concentration, this would probably provide sufficient pre-conditions for methane formation). And at any rate, the planet itself is not exactly hospitable — its atmospheric temperature is on the order of 700 degrees C.

Maybe there is alien life out there somewhere, or maybe there isn’t. All we know right now is that we don’t know of any other life besides that which has emerged on Earth; for all intents and purposes, we are alone. I can understand the excitement that accompanies every discovery made about other planets in the galaxy…I just wish people would exercise a little restraint, and take a little time to think, before jumping to a not particularly likely conclusion about life on other worlds.