Tau.Neutrino said:
New telescope tools will probe universe for water
Water is essential for the existence of carbon-based lifeforms, so when scientists hunt for extraterrestrial life, they look for it whenever probes are sent to other planets or when they peer through space-based telescopes into the cosmos. Though H2O is much more difficult to detect from instruments on the Earth, new water-detecting receivers fitted to the ALMA radio telescope in Chile have been designed to take advantage of the scope’s high, arid, location, and give scientists a new ground-based capability for investigating the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe.
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> Water is essential for the existence of carbon-based lifeforms
Um. It’s more correct to say that life has been found wherever liquid water is found on Earth. We’ve all given some thought to the existence of carbon-based lifeforms that use a liquid other than water. Why not some other polar liquid such as methanol?
> ALMA (the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) has been equipped with new receivers in the wavelengths 1.42 mm to 1.83 mm (211 GHz to 163 GHz) at the low-energy end of the electromagnetic spectrum. ALMA is generally limited to frequencies from 30 GHz to 960 GHz (9.9 mm to 0.31 mm wavelengths) in ten separate frequency bands, so the addition of the new Band 5 receivers has vastly increased its radio-frequency view of the sky.
Um. Wouldn’t “vastly” be an overstatement.
> Band 5 receivers operate at the vibrational frequencies of a range of molecules, including H2O (water), CS (Carbon Monosulfide), HNC (hydrogen isocyanide), and SiO (silicon monoxide).