Life's ingredients in space

Wade Whitlock, Aberdeen, MD — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:12:53 GMT

Put enough carbon, oxygen and hydrogen in a cloud with dust to act as a collection and maybe catalyzing surface, mix in enough time and a bit of energy and stand back!

Considering how reactive the big three are, is this any surprise? The size of the molecules, maybe. But, as things bump together...

It doesn't take a chef, jus the raw ingredients and enough time. Will we get an ET out of the oven? One day, perhaps. Until then we keep listening. Our EM noise is about 100 light years in radius (something over 3.14 million cubic light years!) and expanding as well as getting stronger as we pumped out more radio, television, radar, etc.). Sorry Dr. Hawking, if you are yelling keeping your head down doesn't matter! They may detect us and call, write or visit.

Life's ingredients in space

Chris Eldridge — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:30:19 GMT

I remember reading that "water vapor" itself was very common in space and may help actually contribute to a star's formation by somehow preventing the interstellar cloud from being pushed away from the newly forming star, which is its fuel for growth.

I remember reading some speculation that crude oil here on earth may have been created by other processes other than just ocean life deposites. Could these carbon compounds have contributed in some way to that?

The greenbanks Telescope is pretty darn amazing but hasn't the notion of very large telescopes been proved obsolete by radio interferometry which combines the signal from several smaller telescopes (perhaps around the world) to form a much higher resolution?

I'm not sure it has the same affect on me that it used to, but the idea that we are made of "the ashes of star stuff" was always pretty deep. Furthermore one could say that any element in our body heavier than iron came from a supernova or that most of "the light" generated by the fusion process that created the carbon (etc) in our bodies is actually still traveling out into space... Further more, one could say that the Earth itself may ultimately become the seed for the birth of some future star. This might happen if Earth was ejected from the solar system someday by the passage of some free floating stray planet wondering through!

Life's ingredients in space

Frank Glover — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:19:43 GMT

Regarding 'the ashes of star stuff,' this is exactly what Carl Sagan was getting at, when he titled one of his books; 'The Cosmic Connection.'