Time Immortal

TheSpaceAdmiral writes in with a question about this article.

What exactly did you find misleading in the CanWest article about HD 189733b? Do you really think they jumped to any conclusions about life on other worlds?

The article implied that life on HD 189733b is unlikely (”a world too hot for conditions favourable for life as we understand it”) and was very clear that it’s the process, not the discovery of methane itself, that is the major milestone (”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”). In no way does the article imply that it’s at all likely HD 189733b harbours life. The lead-in (”Astronomers have found organic chemicals on a planet outside our Solar System, a milestone in the hunt for extraterrestrial life”) is vague, but not incorrect or misleading, since it’s quickly clarified.

I think what I found to be potentially misleading was the title of the article relative to its content. “Clues found to alien life” really isn’t an accurate headline for an article that talks about the discovery of methane in the atmosphere of a faraway planet, especially since methane can be created by non-organic processes. I’d be skeptical of taking the presence of methane, especially in an environment such as the atmosphere of HD 189733 b, as any sort of indicator on the road to discovering extraterrestrial life.

It just seems that every time there’s any kind of discovery made about another planet, the writer reporting on the discovery jumps very quickly into the discussion of the possibility of alien life, even when it doesn’t seem particularly justified, by the actual nature of the discovery, to be doing so.

I realize that article writers and stringers don’t necessarily have control over the headline of the article they submit. But that’s also why I kind of find the article misleading — whoever wrote that headline gives the impression, I think, that something actually living might almost have been discovered, or that a necessary precursor for life (some kind of amino) might have been stumbled over. Finding out that it was just methane was, I daresay, something of a let down.

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.