[tjradcliffe]

Particularly when paired with recent detection of water in the atmosphere of an extra-solar planet: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/sep/24/water-small-w...

Water, water, everywhere...

There are people who don't understand what a big deal this is. They think that because this small blue dot happens to have a lot of water, and there is evidence of water elsewhere in the solar system, that water must be common. That is a huge unjustified leap, comparable to "everything I see falls toward the centre of the Earth so everything in the universe must be falling toward the centre of the Earth or moving around it in a perfect circle". That kind of leap rarely works out especially well.

These sorts of observations that demonstrate that water actually is relatively common in the universe, and that is extremely exciting insofar as the prospects of life-as-we-know-it are concerned.

[autokad]

its worth noting that all this article did was show that hydrogen (not water) was present in abundance? Unless I am taking that wrong. and if i am taking it right, a great big 'DUH' as hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe.

[Bluestrike2]

Neither article focuses solely on hydrogen. The Discover article is about interstellar ice, while the Guardian article above is about the observation of water vapor:

> Scientists from the University of Maryland used Hubble’s wide field camera to analyse light from HAT-P-11b’s host star through the planet’s atmosphere. They found that light with a wavelength of 1.4 micrometres was absorbed, matching the absorption spectrum of water molecules.