While it still doesn't even have a cool name yet, the planet HD 189733b which orbits a distant star is playing a big part in astronomers' search for life out in the universe.

Though the surface of the planet is also anything but cool, with a temperature of about 1000 degrees c, it appears to have carbon dioxide.



Obviously too hot to sustain any kind of life itself, the gas giant, dubbed 'hot Jupiter' is about 63 light-years away from Earth.

The planet, said to be blue to 'our eyes', was discovered in 2005 by a team from France. The detection of water vapour and methane in its atmosphere followed in 2007, and now carbon dioxide.

Reuters reports that the latest discovery, made by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, is "a proof-of-concept demonstration that the basic chemistry for life can be measured on planets orbiting other stars".



"These atmospheric studies will begin to determine the compositions and chemical processes operating on distant worlds orbiting other stars," Eric Smith, Hubble Space Telescope program scientist at NASA, was quoted as saying.

"The carbon dioxide is the main reason for the excitement because, under the right circumstances, it could have a connection to biological activity as it does on Earth,'' Mark Swain of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said.

Read the full article here