Building Blocks of Life Found in Planet-Forming Disk

space.com ^ | 12/20/05

[RightWhale]

how they can discern these things

Spectroscopy. It is similar to methods used in chemistry lab.

[Jigsaw John]

This was basically homemade, and he turned spectrograph into a spectroscope. Like another here said, a spectroscope is just an instrument for revealing and observing spectra. Doing this can help determine what things are made of. It takes light and splits it up into component colors. Different elements show up as different colors.

[frgoff]

These articles are always tremendously misleading. They're talking about simple hydrocarbons (formaldehydes, alcohols). It's like saying that quartz, silicon, aluminum and copper are the basic building blocks of a laptop computer. Technically true, practically meaningless.

[brytlea]

THank you both for your answers!
susie

[Jigsaw John]

You're welcome.

And nice dogs!

[brytlea]

:)
susie

[Jigsaw John]

Nice lizard too. I like lizards. Out west here, I feed fence lizards, (blue bellys). Got them trained. I buy meal worms at the local store, and they come a runnin, and eat right out of my hand. Takes some time to train them. It's fun.

[brytlea]

I like most reptiles. We have more lizards here than we can shake a stick at, but many are not native. I like em anyway.
susie

[Jigsaw John]

Merry Christmas Susie

[Revolting cat!]

Can someone explain to me how they can discern these things from this far away?

[brytlea]

ROFL! I have one of those, I'm going to start seeing if I can discover something on a distant world!! :)
susie