THE COSMOS can produce all the water and carbon-rich materials needed to create millions of Earth-like planets. This means there is a good chance that life exists elsewhere in the universe.
The profound implications of what modern telescopes like the Hubble can tell us were discussed last night at a Science Week event in Tallaght.
Kevin Nolan, an Institute of Technology Tallaght physics lecturer and author of a book on Mars, used Hubble and Spitzer telescope images to explain the latest findings in cosmology.
Cosmic Origins was the title he selected for the talk, which took place at the Rua Red Theatre, Tallaght. But he could just as well have used a famous line from Captain Boyle in Sean O'Casey's great play Juno and the Paycock:"I often looked up at the sky an' assed meself the question – what is the stars, what is the stars?"
Mr Nolan told his audience the latest findings about star formation and about a mysterious substance known as “dark energy”.
Earlier he described how the talk focused on the origins of the universe and galaxies and as a consequence the origins of life.
The various satellites and space telescopes had revealed a great deal about the supposedly empty “interstellar medium”, showing that in fact there was an abundance of complex hydrocarbon molecules and also water.
Mr Nolan described one portion of the huge Orion Nebula where there was very rapid star formation taking place.
“In that region, more than 90 times the Earth’s volume of water is synthesised in space every day,” he said.
The region is also rich with carbon-based molecules.
The Spitzer telescope can actually “see” these materials in the interstellar medium, where they will accumulate until, in time, they will begin to coalesce under the force of gravity into a proto-solar system surrounding a new star.
Asked how the material got there, he said it starts with a supernova star explosion. Carbon and other heavy materials form inside the star as it ages. “Once a star explodes it releases that carbon into the interstellar medium.”
It is affected, however, by radiation from surrounding stars and chemically changes.
The carbon compounds and water seen by the telescopes was “manufactured by interstellar gas and dust. It stays there until you get planetary formation.”
As a new sun begins to form, pulling surrounding material into itself, planets are also formed and if conditions are right water and organic compounds will accumulate on their surfaces.
Scientists believe that the complex carbon compounds delivered to Earth’s surface in this way enabled the far more complex chemistry of life to begin. Scientists were now sending satellites to study Mars in the hope of finding “evidence for the origins of life”, Mr Nolan said.