One of astronomy’s longest-running “missing persons” investigations has concluded: astronomers have found molecular oxygen in space.
While single atoms of oxygen have been found alone or incorporated into other molecules, the oxygen molecule – the one we breathe – had never been seen.
The Herschel space telescope spotted the molecules in a star-forming region in the constellation of Orion.
The find will be published in the Astrophysical Journal.
Oxygen is the third most abundant element in the cosmos, after hydrogen and helium. Its molecular form, with two atoms joined by a double bond, makes life on Earth possible – but this form had never definitively been seen in space.
A 2007 effort from the Swedish Odin telescope, published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, claimed a discovery of oxygen in a nearby star-forming region, but the discovery could not be independently confirmed.
One possible location for the missing oxygen is locked onto dust grains and incorporated into water ice.
The team chose a star-forming region in the constellation Orion, believing that oxygen would be “baked off” from the ice and dust in a warmer, more turbulent part of space.
Instruments on the Herschel telescope, sensitive to infrared light, picked up small signatures of the elusive molecular oxygen.
“This explains where some of the oxygen might be hiding,” said Paul Goldsmith, principal investigator on the Herschel Oxygen Project.
“But we didn’t find large amounts of it, and still don’t understand what is so special about the spots where we find it. The Universe still holds many secrets.”
WHAT ARE THESE PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT! YOU MEAN THIS IS THE FIRST TIME THEY DISCOVERED OXYGEN IN SPACE? I THOUGHT THAT SOVIET ASTRONAUT BROUGHT UP SOME IN THE 60’S, ELSE HE WOULDN’T BE BREATHING WOULD HE?HEH HEH HEH
Humanist, thanks for your response, but I have several observations on it which you should consider seriously:
1-You simply missed my point almost in its entirety by your focusing on mere technicalities that aren’t even essential in determining whether we came by evolution or were created. For instance, you deride my use of the term ‘perfection’ by giving an example of its relativity in meaning. But you don’t realize that that’s my point exactly!- Our intelligent Creator placed each star and each planet, including earth, EXACTLY where he wanted it, to suit his PURPOSES. And they do. Why would he put all planets in earth’s orbit? He only wanted ONE of them to sustain life, and that’s very obvious. Think of what gravitational effects the other planets, some far more massive than earth, would have on our planet were they all in such close proximity to earth! Blind chance would be more likely to place planets in such locations that would be deadly to one that’s supposed to sustain life. But our Creator is much too wise to do so.So yes, he placed them PERFECTLY where he wanted them and the systems he put in place do operate to the minutest precision – (speed of orbits, length of orbits, gravitational force, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, electromagnetism are all perfectly fine-tuned, as science proves) – perfection for all means and purposes.
2-Regarding what our body can and cannot do, are you really serious in proposing this as an argument against creation? Think – men who want to make a machine that can dive deep into the ocean make a SUBMARINE. If they want a machine that can fly, then they make an AIRCRAFT. Ever saw a flying submarine? Our Creator made us to operate within the limitations that HE determined, So yes, we perfectly suit what he made us to be able to do within his own laws of physics, just as the aircraft suits what it was designed for. Its common sense.
Just imagine what a flying submarine that can also drive on a mountain road, climb trees, and still go into space would have to look like! So likewise imagine what God would have to make us look like if he designed us to fly, dive to 10000ft in the ocean, walk on the road, survive naked at the North pole, and survive in space where he purposely did not create breathable atmosphere, etc etc etc.
3-Are you an experienced scientist? You made some dogmatic claims about evolution that many experienced scientists don’t dare make! How could you? This topic is a hot debate among scientists, many of whom actually support creation!! Where is your evidence? Please explain just how ‘nicely’ evolution explains our existence – and include evolution’s PURPOSE for evolving us, else evolution would have evolved us for a meaningless life. If you do successfully explain that, then you will have accomplished something that NO SCIENTIST, PAST OR PRESENT, HAS EVER SUCCESSFULLY DONE, or claim to be able to do, for that matter. You’ll become world famous this instant!
On the other hand, everything the Bible describes about creation – from the order of appearance of land forms and species, to the immensity and orderliness of the heavenly bodies, agree with known science. Read Genesis chapter 1,2. The purpose of life is also made clear, else we are no better than animals. Gen. 1;27,28; Ps.37:29
4- The Bible which explains God and Creation certainly does not describe him as an evil person bringing tragedy for ‘kicks’. Not even animals do that – they kill to eat or to defend themselves or their young. Only wicked minded humans do evil for ‘kicks’. But as you know, not all humans are evil. I certainly don’t think of you as an evil person who would destroy a land just for kicks. You sound like someone who would know some geography so as to understand climate and weather and natural disasters. Our God, promises to exercise his control over natural forces so that they don’t become disasters in the promised earthly paradise. He has a reason for ALLOWING evil today, and the Bible clearly explains his reason.
I would encourage you to again (assuming you already did)read the Bible with an open mind and ask questions. Ministers who preach from door to door will be able to answer those questions and show you more evidence of how the Bible’s account of Creation harmonizes with Science.
Thanks for listening.
Take care.
Yeah, if you want to enter the paradise you better stop believing in this Charles Taze Russel sh*t
Glad to see this posted here and I hope it will spur people to read on about the significance of such a discovery. The universe holds a vast array of secrets, as the universe itself is unfathomably vast, and our entire universe may simply be one of many, just as we our solar system is one of thousands in our galaxy alone, and our galaxy, the Milky Way, is one of literally billions upon billions, all separated by distances we could never hope to travel with current technology. (We could hardly even go beyond our solar system alone in a manned vehicle with current technology, though unmanned probes can go much further.)
Learning about the universe, for me, is a beautiful, wondrous, and, indeed, humbling thing–humbling because I am reminded of my own smallness on not only the Earth but in the vastness around our planet. We are less than grains of sand on a near-infinite beach.
If we simply look at all this and say “scientists are so dumb. Why can’t they see that God is the answer to all?”–well, this is not scientific, for one, because you would then have to explain not only what this deity is in terms consistent with scientific theory but also where that deity came from. And, at any rate, we have learnt so much, century after century, by asking questions, by not relying on the easy, comforting, unthought-out answers like the one above. Perhaps we will discover one day that it is some sort of omnipotent force that made the universe. But until then, there is no evidence for it, and we must continue to examine and question the astonishing world around us.
I know my very name, much less the content of my posts, incurs wrath in certain posters on DNO. I am sorry that this is so, but I really don’t care in the long run, and I will continue to post my questions and reflections. I encourage anyone who is curious to do the same. Do not let the fundamentalists try to control what you think. Think for yourselves, and read, watch, and learn.
Well, Humanist, your comment even adds to the evidence that there is an omnipotent, intelligent Creator who brought all these things into existence,placed them in precise order, and keeps them there. There is no possibility, nor any evidence, that such innumerable massive objects, such precise consistent laws governing their movements, such perfect inter-dependence among them (including animate objects), such beauty and consistent patterns and designs, could simply come into existence by themselves. If these perfectly organized systems simply came about by random,undirected, blind, unintelligent chance, why then, does it take orderly, directed, seeing, intelligent scientists/inventors years/decades to plan, design,arrange, build and test far simpler machinery, equipment, vehicles or systems? And why do these machinery, systems etc still not operate perfectly as does our universe and all systems and machinery therein that sustain life? Hebrews 3:4 makes perfect sense to all observant persons with reasonable minds: “Of course, every house is constructed by SOMEONE..” makes sense, right? Well, the second part of this verse should make equal sense: “But he that constructed all things, is GOD.”, See also Romans. 1:20, where it highlights that the Creator’s qualities are so evident in creation (just as a builder’s qualities can be seen in his product), that those who don’t believe God exists are inexcusable.
NatureBoy, despite your name, you clearly do not understand nature or the cosmos. “Perfectly organized systems?” Not at all. Earth may be correctly positioned from the sun so as to support life, yes, but that is simply one lucky planet out of many in our solar system and one out of thousands in our galaxy and one out of perhaps trillions in the billions of other universes beyond our own. Perfection is a happy myth people think of when things are going their way. As soon as an earthquake destroys your home or a mega tsunami puts much of an island underwater, you won’t be singing that same all-is-happy-and-perfect tune. Our own bodies are absurdly frail, we can only live on a tiny fraction of the one planet we can live on (much of it being water, and great portions of the land being either desert or ice). We cannot fly without technology that millenia to develop, cannot dive down deep with technology that took millenia to develop, we cannot–you get the picture.
“Perfection?” We cannot even live in 99% of the universe we live in! Step outside a space craft in orbit and see what happens. Step onto another planet without a space suit and breathing apparati, and see how fast you die.
Moreover, our earth may simply be one of many inhabited planets. We have found a number of planets that are the right distance from their suns to possibly support life.
Evolution nicely explains us; and while explaining the rest of the universe is trickier, you cannot just tell me that a creator is the answer? Where did it come from? It was just there? That’s not science–that’s mysticism, magic. And why is there no direct evidence for such a thing? (When I talk about “god,” I am talking about a personal deity, you know, the kind of god that looks like a human or some earthly thing and listens to prayers and sends hurricanes after evil Puerto Rico every year for kicks and all that. If you mean by “god” a set of as-yet undiscovered scientific principles, though, that is a bit different. This is how Einstein saw god–as the universe itself, not as some biblical man on clouds.)
So thanks for your post, but I can assure you that my post does not do what you claim it does, and no amount of verse-quoting will make it.
correction: *billions of “galaxies,” not “universes.” Although there may well be other universes. If multiverse/many-world theory is correct, and there is indirect evidence for other universes acting upon our own, then our entire vast universe is just one out of who-knows-how-many. This makes us even less special than we already are.
Thats cuz someone greater than us all created this universe
Almighty God- That’s who
How do you logically come to this conclusion from reading the article? If everyone had that attitude, we would never try to find the real answers to anything, and we would be stuck in the dark ages.