The search for extraterrestrial life has just made a pioneering discovery. The NASA based Hubble Space Telescope has detected the presence of carbon dioxide on a planet outside our solar system. Although this does not guarantee the presence of life on the planet, however it does increase the chance by a considerable extent.

Unlike Earth, this planet has extreme hot temperature on its surface, which cannot support life, but the evidence of organic compounds has made the scientists more optimistic.  “The very fact that we’re able to detect it, and estimate its abundance, is significant for the long-term effort of characterizing planets both to find out what they’re made of and to find out if they could be a possible host for life.“, says astronomer Mark Swain of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at NASA.

The planet is called HD 189733b and is 63 light-years from our Earth.

[source: hubblesite.org]