Billions of Planets With Life?

[Meuiama Tsamsiyu (Toruk Makto)]

http://news.yahoo.com/billions-planets-life-074000332.html

Fascinating.

[Kamean]

Awesome!

[Seze Mune]

Tantalizing.   

[`Eylan Ayfalulukanä]

Another interesting thing about these dwarf stars is that they have very long lifetimes on the main sequence. Some of those stars may date back 11 billion or more years. And they will be around for billions of years to come. Despite the short-term instability of these stars, it is the long-term stability of these stars that is conducive to the formation of life.

The one thing everyone seems to forget about life though, is that life (as we understand it) runs backwards against the second law of thermodynamics. If there is life out there, some force 'from outside' is driving it, but that is a discussion for the religion/philosophy parts of this 'board.

[Meuiama Tsamsiyu (Toruk Makto)]

You get a usable form of liquid (water) and a usable form of atmosphere (air) and life can and likely will exist. Given temperature variances.

I wouldn't be surprised if out there somewhere there is a planet with life living at over 180 degrees, and another planet with life living at 40 degrees. Life finds a way. We even think it is possible for life on several of out solar system satellites. IO of Jupiter, Titan of Saturn. So who knows, right?

It is a statistical impossibility that we really are alone.

[Tsanten Eywa 'eveng]

You get a usable form of liquid (water) and a usable form of atmosphere (air) and life can and likely will exist. Given temperature variances.

I wouldn't be surprised if out there somewhere there is a planet with life living at over 180 degrees, and another planet with life living at 40 degrees. Life finds a way. We even think it is possible for life on several of out solar system satellites. IO of Jupiter, Titan of Saturn. So who knows, right?

It is a statistical impossibility that we really are alone.

And the planet need to be in perfect size, not like Mars, because if it is the size of Mars, it can't hold an atmosphere, and it will be ripped apart from it. That is currently happening to Mars, because of solar storms. Mars is very weak
And if the planet is too big, it can be gas on it that life can't exist with, maybe only in the atmosphere. When it is too big, it can start to generate heat. Like the planet Jupiter. Jupiter is very hot inside it. That was we calling a "failed star"

[Meuiama Tsamsiyu (Toruk Makto)]

You get a usable form of liquid (water) and a usable form of atmosphere (air) and life can and likely will exist. Given temperature variances.

I wouldn't be surprised if out there somewhere there is a planet with life living at over 180 degrees, and another planet with life living at 40 degrees. Life finds a way. We even think it is possible for life on several of out solar system satellites. IO of Jupiter, Titan of Saturn. So who knows, right?

It is a statistical impossibility that we really are alone.

And the planet need to be in perfect size, not like Mars, because if it is the size of Mars, it can't hold an atmosphere, and it will be ripped apart from it. That is currently happening to Mars, because of solar storms. Mars is very weak
And if the planet is too big, it can be gas on it that life can't exist with, maybe only in the atmosphere. When it is too big, it can start to generate heat. Like the planet Jupiter. Jupiter is very hot inside it. That was we calling a "failed star"

You failed to consider planet quandries like our desired home of Pandora... smaller than the Earth yet more dense of an atmosphere to counter a slightly less gravity. Still more gravity for it's size than the Earth in relation. There are billions of variables out there for these hoped for planets. Some large, some smaller. Some rock, some gas. It truly is amazing.

[Tsanten Eywa 'eveng]

You get a usable form of liquid (water) and a usable form of atmosphere (air) and life can and likely will exist. Given temperature variances.

I wouldn't be surprised if out there somewhere there is a planet with life living at over 180 degrees, and another planet with life living at 40 degrees. Life finds a way. We even think it is possible for life on several of out solar system satellites. IO of Jupiter, Titan of Saturn. So who knows, right?

It is a statistical impossibility that we really are alone.

And the planet need to be in perfect size, not like Mars, because if it is the size of Mars, it can't hold an atmosphere, and it will be ripped apart from it. That is currently happening to Mars, because of solar storms. Mars is very weak
And if the planet is too big, it can be gas on it that life can't exist with, maybe only in the atmosphere. When it is too big, it can start to generate heat. Like the planet Jupiter. Jupiter is very hot inside it. That was we calling a "failed star"

You failed to consider planet quandries like our desired home of Pandora... smaller than the Earth yet more dense of an atmosphere to counter a slightly less gravity. Still more gravity for it's size than the Earth in relation. There are billions of variables out there for these hoped for planets. Some large, some smaller. Some rock, some gas. It truly is amazing.

Pandora is little bigger than Mars

It is in the middle of the size of Mars and Earth. Around the same size as Mercury

[Meuiama Tsamsiyu (Toruk Makto)]

The Mercury that is only the remains of a planet core with a little rock on the surface? I really do wonder what happened to that planet.

[Tsanten Eywa 'eveng]

The Mercury that is only the remains of a planet core with a little rock on the surface? I really do wonder what happened to that planet.

Then I mean Mars is the same size as Mercury, I am too wondering what happened to that poor little planet, around +400 in the sunlight and on nightside, -150 degrees celsius


It can be because of the Sun is growing

[Seze Mune]

The one thing everyone seems to forget about life though, is that life (as we understand it) runs backwards against the second law of thermodynamics. If there is life out there, some force 'from outside' is driving it, but that is a discussion for the religion/philosophy parts of this 'board.

Same for here; something external appears to be catalysing it.  Unless one attributes consciousness to what are now thought of as inert particles developed from forms of electromagnetism (and by extension to raw energy itself), and then applies a form of gestalt dynamics, there doesn't seem to be a way to explain the existence of life in any form with the sciences we now have.

As you say, ma 'Eylan, it's a slushball for the religion/philosophy sections.

[Meuiama Tsamsiyu (Toruk Makto)]

I agree with Seze. It takes consciousness to create religions. I believe in faith, but not religion.

Life is mutation after mutation of evolution. The sun, any sun with a properly located planet with the basics for survival, can mutate that life into what you and I have become over eons. Sometime in the distant past something blasted the Earth with an energy that forced single cell organisms to begin forming into complex multi celled creatures. Shellfish, finned fish, then land and air life. Life will exist on OUR planet, theoretically for another billion or more years. (provided humanity does not kill everything else as its own species destroys itself)

[Vur’evenge]

Wonderful link!  Thank you!!  

And a couple comments on other replies... Jupiter is a gas giant, similar to Avatar's fictional Polyphemus, a planetary gas giant in the Alpha Centauri A system... slightly smaller and denser than Jupiter.  Pandora is the 5th of 14 moons of Polyphemus.  It's busy out there around that star, eh?      Alpha Centauri A and B have been among my favorite stars since I was a young child in the 1960s looking through the lenses of my dad's telescope on many, many nights.  Latest stuff I've read on the search for a planetary system for Alpha Centauri A says they have yet to find wobble significant enough to suggest planets there.  I hope they will see more as the technology continues to improve.   Hope I live that long...  I hope, I hope!



Back to Jupiter briefly.  Even though elementary school science textbooks (and some high school texts) have for many decades called gas giants "failed stars", it's a weak analogy at best. Jupiter is roughly 80 times lighter than the lightest star that undergoes fusion. So it would need to have accumulated 80 times the mass of what it already has in order to have "real star" potential.  That I'm aware of no models of our solar system's formation show this as a possible scenario. So much we don't know yet, and so much about which we can speculate.  Fun!

That said, here's a decent presentation of what's going on with NASA's WISE Astronomy - Brown Dwarfs and Planets: A Blurry Boundary

[Meuiama Tsamsiyu (Toruk Makto)]

Wonderful link!  Thank you!! 

And a couple comments on other replies... Jupiter is a gas giant, similar to Avatar's fictional Polyphemus, a planetary gas giant in the Alpha Centauri A system... slightly smaller and denser than Jupiter.  Pandora is the 5th of 14 moons of Polyphemus.  It's busy out there around that star, eh?      Alpha Centauri A and B have been among my favorite stars since I was a young child in the 1960s looking through the lenses of my dad's telescope on many, many nights.  Latest stuff I've read on the search for a planetary system for Alpha Centauri A says they have yet to find wobble significant enough to suggest planets there.  I hope they will see more as the technology continues to improve.   Hope I live that long...  I hope, I hope!



Back to Jupiter briefly.  Even though elementary school science textbooks (and some high school texts) have for many decades called gas giants "failed stars", it's a weak analogy at best. Jupiter is roughly 80 times lighter than the lightest star that undergoes fusion. So it would need to have accumulated 80 times the mass of what it already has in order to have "real star" potential.  That I'm aware of no models of our solar system's formation show this as a possible scenario.

I suppose then you COULD consider that a 'failed star', eh?

From the shows I've watched on History Channel and Discovery and other similar networks... the solar system actually comprised of more than 50 small planets as it formed. Neptune was the inner of the three gas giants at this point. I know (from the hypothetical) that our moon was formed after a forming planet about the size of Mars collided with our ever so slightly hardening molten Earth several billion years ago.

I imagine that something similar happened to Mercury. As mentioned earlier in the thread. A truly interesting thing, our solar system, and those trillions around us, out there, in space.

[Niri Te]

Wonderful link!  Thank you!!  

And a couple comments on other replies... Jupiter is a gas giant, similar to Avatar's fictional Polyphemus, a planetary gas giant in the Alpha Centauri A system... slightly smaller and denser than Jupiter.  Pandora is the 5th of 14 moons of Polyphemus.  It's busy out there around that star, eh?      Alpha Centauri A and B have been among my favorite stars since I was a young child in the 1960s looking through the lenses of my dad's telescope on many, many nights.  Latest stuff I've read on the search for a planetary system for Alpha Centauri A says they have yet to find wobble significant enough to suggest planets there.  I hope they will see more as the technology continues to improve.   Hope I live that long...  I hope, I hope!



Back to Jupiter briefly.  Even though elementary school science textbooks (and some high school texts) have for many decades called gas giants "failed stars", it's a weak analogy at best. Jupiter is roughly 80 times lighter than the lightest star that undergoes fusion. So it would need to have accumulated 80 times the mass of what it already has in order to have "real star" potential.  That I'm aware of no models of our solar system's formation show this as a possible scenario. So much we don't know yet, and so much about which we can speculate.  Fun!

That said, here's a decent presentation of what's going on with NASA's WISE Astronomy - Brown Dwarfs and Planets: A Blurry Boundary

Thank you for Your link to the paper,on NASA's WISE astronomy. I had not seen it, and id bolsters my long held beliefs about Jupiter.
For those here who read that WISE paper, and would like some data on Jupiter to compare it too, got to this site, and check out the numbers. 
The site for the Jupiter temperature numbers is  http://planetfacts.org/temperature-on-jupiter/
ENJOY folks!!
Niri Te

[Niri Te]

Another interesting thing about these dwarf stars is that they have very long lifetimes on the main sequence. Some of those stars may date back 11 billion or more years. And they will be around for billions of years to come. Despite the short-term instability of these stars, it is the long-term stability of these stars that is conducive to the formation of life.

The one thing everyone seems to forget about life though, is that life (as we understand it) runs backwards against the second law of thermodynamics. If there is life out there, some force 'from outside' is driving it, but that is a discussion for the religion/philosophy parts of this 'board.

I would LOVE to get into that discussion with you by PM ma 'Eylan.
Niri Te

[Meuiama Tsamsiyu (Toruk Makto)]

So is it the lack of oxygen or a burnable atmosphere that keeps the hydrogen liquid instead of igniting and burning off? I have often wondered this.

[`Eylan Ayfalulukanä]

So is it the lack of oxygen or a burnable atmosphere that keeps the hydrogen liquid instead of igniting and burning off? I have often wondered this.

Interesting question! To know the answer, you need to understand the state that stellar matter is in. It is not a liquid or solid, even though the density might exceed that of a liquid or solid at temparatures we are more used to. Stars are made of gas, or more correctly, plasma, as the electrons are mainly stripped off the atoms. At temperatures like what you find in a star, compounds like water (from the burning of hydrogen) do not normally form.

Some cooler stars, like the outer layers of big red giants (like Antares or Betelgeuse) are cool enough that they have non-ionized matter in their outer atmospheeres 9neutral hydrogen). Some of the coolest stars do have compounds like water in their outer layers. But inside, where fusion is going on, everything is plasma. Stars that are hot enough to create large amonts of oxygen through fusion are going to be hot enough that water doesn't normally form. But when they are spent, they might eject a lot of water when they puff off their outer layers. A classic example of this is one of my favorite objects-- the frosty Leo nebula. This is a planetary nebula whose blown-off gas shells are mainly water ice apparently condensed on silica particles.

The rate of nuclear fusion in a star is a power function of the size of the star-- larger stars burn up hydrogen at much higher rates than smaller stars. Thus smaller stars have much longer lives than larger stars. Some of the largest stars don't even last a million years, while some red dwarves will burn for 15+ billion years.

[Meuiama Tsamsiyu (Toruk Makto)]

So is it the lack of oxygen or a burnable atmosphere that keeps the hydrogen liquid instead of igniting and burning off? I have often wondered this.

Interesting question! To know the answer, you need to understand the state that stellar matter is in. It is not a liquid or solid, even though the density might exceed that of a liquid or solid at temparatures we are more used to. Stars are made of gas, or more correctly, plasma, as the electrons are mainly stripped off the atoms. At temperatures like what you find in a star, compounds like water (from the burning of hydrogen) do not normally form.

Some cooler stars, like the outer layers of big red giants (like Antares or Betelgeuse) are cool enough that they have non-ionized matter in their outer atmospheeres 9neutral hydrogen). Some of the coolest stars do have compounds like water in their outer layers. But inside, where fusion is going on, everything is plasma. Stars that are hot enough to create large amonts of oxygen through fusion are going to be hot enough that water doesn't normally form. But when they are spent, they might eject a lot of water when they puff off their outer layers. A classic example of this is one of my favorite objects-- the frosty Leo nebula. This is a planetary nebula whose blown-off gas shells are mainly water ice apparently condensed on silica particles.

The rate of nuclear fusion in a star is a power function of the size of the star-- larger stars burn up hydrogen at much higher rates than smaller stars. Thus smaller stars have much longer lives than larger stars. Some of the largest stars don't even last a million years, while some red dwarves will burn for 15+ billion years.

I agree with your statement. Water (usually in the form of ice) is probably one of the most abundant things in space. Look a tthe Ort Cloud surrounding our very solar system. Beyond Pluto. A shield of ice, seemingly protecting our system from the vast emptiness between our system and the next. I personally think navigating that cloud is our largest challenge, once we get that far into space travel (if humanity even survives long enough to develop that technology)

I learned while reading ht HVAC college books that certain things boil off at certain temperatures... water at sea level at 212 F while water in Denver boils at closer to 180 F... so in space I can imagine any water would instantly boil at zero pressure. Kinda makes the mind wander and reel a bit at all the possibilities.

[Human No More]

In space? Not really. Space is big, and mostly empty. Having a couple of hydrogen atoms per cubic metre adds up to a lot.