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It's wet out there

• 21 September 2002
• Hazel Muir
• Magazine issue 2361

TANTALISING signs of water have been found in the atmospheres of planets orbiting distant stars. If the discovery is confirmed, it will fuel speculation that the Galaxy is teeming with life.

"This would be a historic discovery - the first detection of a prebiotic molecule in an extrasolar planet," says Cristiano Cosmovici of the Institute for Cosmic and Planetary Sciences in Rome, whose team made the discovery.

Cosmovici has looked for water near 17 stars, all of which are thought to have planetary systems or cometary clouds. His team used the 32-metre Medicina radio telescope near Bologna to look for water "maser" emissions, telltale microwaves that might come from water in a planet's atmosphere when it's bathed in the infrared light of its star.

Three of the planetary systems are producing these emissions, Cosmovici told the Second European Workshop on Exo/Astrobiology in Austria this week. One orbits the star Upsilon ...