carbon Archives

December 8, 2010December 24, 2015 by Jon Voisey

WASP-12b: A Carbon Rich Exoplanet

Illustration of WASP-12b in orbit about its host star (Credit: ESA/C Carreau)

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Since its discovery in 2008, WASP-12b has been an unusual planet. This 1.4 Jovian mass, gas giant lies so close to its parent star that gas is being stripped from its atmosphere. But being stripped away isn’t the only odd property of this planet’s atmosphere. A new study has shown that it’s full of carbon.

The discovery was published in today’s issue of Nature was led by Nikku Madhusudhan, a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University in combination with the Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP) team that originally discovered the planet. Unlike other recent studies of planetary atmospheres, this study did not employ transit spectroscopy. Instead, the team examined the reflective properties of the planet at four wavelengths, observations of which three came from another study using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii.

To determine the composition of the atmosphere, the flux of the planet at each of these wavelengths was then compared to models of planetary atmospheres with differing compositions. The models included compounds such as methane, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, water vapor and ammonia as well as the temperature distribution of the planet.

For a typical hot Jupiter, models have most closely fit a ratio of about 0.5 for carbon to oxygen which suggests that oxygen is more prevalent in the atmospheres, often in the form of water vapor, as well as very little methane. For WASP-12b, Madhusudhan’s team found an abundance of more than 100 times that of standard hot Jupiters for methane (CH₄). When examining the carbon to oxygen ratio, they discovered a ratio greater than one implying that the planet is unusually carbon rich.

While WASP-12b is certainly not a friendly place for life, the discovery of a planet with so much carbon may hold implications for life elsewhere in the universe. Astronomers expect that the abundance was due to the formation of the planet from rocky materials high in carbon as opposed to icy bodies like comets. This suggests that there may be an entire range of carbon abundances available for planets. With the versatility of carbon for forming organic compounds, this enhanced abundance may lead to other, rocky planets covered in tar like substances rife with organics.

The team speculates that such worlds may exist in the same solar system. Previous studies have shown that WASP-12b’s orbit is not circular and some have suggested that this may indicate the presence of another body which tugs on 12b’s orbit.

September 20, 2010January 7, 2017 by Matt Williams

What is Carbon Dioxide?

CO2 is more than just the stuff that comes out of smokestacks, tailpipes, cigarettes and campfires. It is also a crucial element here on planet Earth, essential to life and its processes. It is used by plants to make sugars during photosynthesis. It is emitted by all animals, as well as some plants, fungi and microorganisms, during respiration. It is used by any organism that relies either directly or indirectly on plants for food; hence, it is a major component of the Carbon Cycle. It is also a major greenhouse gas, hence why it is so closely associated with Climate Change.

Joseph Black, a Scottish chemist and physician, was the first to identify carbon dioxide in the 1750s. He did so by heating calcium carbonate (limestone) with heat and acids, the result of which was the release of a gas that was denser than normal air and did not support flame or animal life. He also observed that it could be injected into calcium hydroxide (a liquid solution of lime) to produce Calcium Carbonate. Then, in 1772, another chemist named Joseph Priestley came up with of combining CO2 and water, thus inventing soda water. He was also intrinsic in coming up with the concept of the Carbon Cycle.

Since that time, our understanding of CO2 and its importance as both a greenhouse gas and an integral part of the Carbon Cycle has grown exponentially. For example, we’ve come to understand that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 fluctuate slightly with the change of the seasons, driven primarily by seasonal plant growth in the Northern Hemisphere. Concentrations of carbon dioxide fall during the northern spring and summer as plants consume the gas, and rise during the northern autumn and winter as plants go dormant, die and decay.

Traditionally, atmospheric CO2 levels were dependent on the respirations of animals, plants and microorganisms (as well as natural phenomena like volcanoes, geothermal processes, and forest fires). However, human activity has since come to be the major mitigating factor. The use of fossil fuels has been the major producer of CO2 since the Industrial Revolution. By relying increasingly on fossil fuels for transportation, heating, and manufacturing, we are threatening to offset the natural balance of CO2 in the atmosphere, water and soil, which in turn is having observable and escalating consequences for our environment. As is the process of deforestation which deprives the Earth of one it’s most important CO2 consumers and another important link in the Carbon Cycle.

As of April 2010, CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere is at a concentration of 391 parts per million (ppm) by volume. For an illustrated breakdown of CO2 emissions per capita per country, click here.

We have written many articles about Carbon Dioxide for Universe Today. Here’s an article about the Carbon Cycle Diagram, and here’s an article about Greenhouse Effect.

If you’d like more info on Carbon Dioxide, check out NASA’s The Global Climate Change. And here’s a link to The Carbon Cycle.

We’ve also recorded an episode of Astronomy Cast all about planet Earth. Listen here, Episode 51: Earth.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle
http://www.eoearth.org/article/carbon_dioxide
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emission/co2.html
http://www.lenntech.com/carbon-dioxide.htm
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/issues/climate-change/science/climate-change-basics/climate-change-101-1/

February 25, 2008December 26, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Be A Carbon Hero

NASA is quite proud of its spinoffs technology developed for the space agency’s needs in space that in turn contribute to commercial innovations that improve life here on Earth. And rightly so. Just as a quick example, improvements in spacesuits have led to better protection for firefighters, scuba divers and people working in cold weather. But the list of NASA spinoffs is quite extensive.

Just like NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) has a Technology Transfer office to help inventors and businesses use space technology for non-space applications. The latest invention touted as an ESA spinoff is a small hand-held device called a Carbon Hero that might help make people more aware of the carbon footprint they are leaving behind due to vehicle emissions.

Used in conjunction with a cell phone, the Carbon Hero receives data from navigation satellites to determine the mode of transportation being used. The device’s algorithm is able to use the speed and position of the user to determine how they are traveling, and how much CO2 they are generating. The user doesn’t have to enter any information, the data is computed automatically.

The user would get feedback on the environmental impact of different types of transportation – whether by train, plane, bike or by foot. The Carbon Hero lets the user compare one kind of travel with another and calculate the environmental benefits daily, weekly and monthly.

“If you go on a diet you want to see if all that effort has made a difference so you weigh yourself. The beauty of our system is that it’s easy; you have a “weighing scale” on you all the time giving you your carbon footprint. When you make the effort to walk instead of taking the car you can immediately see the result, so it feels more worthwhile doing it and you are more likely to stick with it,” says Andreas Zachariah, a graduate student from the Royal College of Art in London and inventor of Carbon Hero.

The device has been tested using the GPS system, but will be fully operational after Galileo, the European global navigation system is fully up and running.

Learn more about ESA’s Technology Transfer Programme Office.

Learn more about NASA Spinoffs.

Original News Source: ESA Press Release

January 12, 2008December 26, 2015 by Ian O'Neill

Radioactive Hot Spots on Earth’s Beaches May Have Sparked Life

We’ve heard about life being created in a puddle of primordial chemical soup, sparked by lightning strikes, or organic molecules falling to Earth from comets or planets, such as Mars. But now, there is an alternative. Early Earth was radioactive; the Moon also had a lower orbit, generating strong tidal forces. Due to the close proximity to abundant water, radioactive beaches may have possessed all the essential ingredients for organic compounds, and eventually life, to thrive.

Research by the University of Washington, Seattle, suggests that perhaps the highly radioactive environment of Earth some 4 billion years ago may have been the ideal time for life to form. The orbit of the Moon also had a part to play in this offbeat theory.

Through strong tidal forces by a Moon that orbited far closer to the Earth than it does today, radioactive elements accumulated on the beaches could be gravitationally sorted. The chemical energy in these beach hot spots was probably high enough to allow self-sustaining fission processes (which occurs in natural concentrations of uranium). The main product from fission is heat, therefore powering chemical processes and the generation of organic, life-giving compounds.

“Amino acids, sugars and [soluble] phosphate can all be produced simultaneously in a radioactive beach environment.” – Zachary Adam, an astrobiologist at the University of Washington Seattle.

This is a hard theory to understand, it is well known that radioactivity breaks down organic molecules and causes a whole host of problems for us carbon-based creatures. But in the early Earth, devoid of plants and animals, radioactive processes may have provided energy for life to begin in the first place.

This theory also partially explains why life may be a very rare occurrence in the universe: there must be the correct concentration of radioactive elements, on the surface of a water-dominated developing planet, with tidal forces supplied by a closely orbiting stellar body. The Earth may, after all, be unique.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk