Tag Archives: Life in Outer Space

Potential Life-Sustaining Planets are Closer and Closer

January 15, 2023 admin Leave a comment

SMACS 0723A galaxy cluster — Infrared light shows the deepest view of distant galaxies ever photographed. JWST Photo: NASA Public Domain

Overview

The question of extraterrestrial life on other worlds has baffled even the foremost scientists for millennia. With the Hubble telescope and now, the James Webb telescope floating in the cosmos a million miles from Earth, we are finding more and more life-sustaining planets on a frequent virtual basis.

This is different from space observatories being able to determine the existence of exoplanets by spectrum analysis, calculating their gravitational pull from their sun, or by use of the transit method – an observational process whereby a star changes in brightness when a planet is seen orbiting around it. The JWST advanced technology surpassed those methods by actually taking pictures of these exoplanets. This is the first time this has ever been done!

Exoplanets with Life? Maybe!

In 2013, a team of astronomers led by Dr. Duncan Wright from the University of New South Wales discovered the Wolf 1061 System, using the HARPS spectrograph, part of the European Southern Observatory’s telescope in La Salla in Chile.

This solar system contains an inactive red dwarf star, orbited by possibly seven planets including three super-Earths. These planets may be capable of supporting life as we know it, as they have a low enough mass to be potentially rocky with a solid surface.

The most interesting of the three planets is Wolf 1061c. At four times the size of the Earth, it is the closest habitable planet outside our solar system. It also sits in the Goldilocks Zone, close enough to its sun to contain liquid water and support life with its mild temperatures.

Artist's impression of the planetary system around Wolf 1061 — Artist’s impression of the planetary system around Wolf 1061. Photo: Wikipedia Public Domain

Even though rocky planets similar to our own and multi-planet systems are known to be abundant in our galaxy, most of the ones discovered are hundreds, if not thousands of light years away. They are too far for us to get to using current technology.

Still, with the hope of Wolf 1061c sitting right next door, scientists are now hopeful that they can test the planet’s atmosphere in more detail once it passes across the face of its star, making the not-so-lone Wolf planet easier to study and determine if it has the potential to sustain life.

Life is Out There

Here we list a sampling of just a few exoplanets that could sustain life.

WASP-39 b

In 2022, the James Webb Telescope discovered a planet, called WASP-39 b in the Virgo constellation. Known as ‘Bocaprins’, the planet orbits a star about 700 light-years from Earth. Scientists were surprised to see that this planet’s atomic structure resembles water and carbon – two of the essential ingredients of universal life.

Kepler-186f

But that’s not all. Planets such as Kepler-186f are one of the planets that astronomers say have a very good chance of potential life, relative to the hundreds of other planets discovered outside of our solar system. Kepler-186f is the first exoplanet found to be in the habitable zone. Slightly larger than Earth, it is 490 light-years away. That’s not too far comparatively speaking.

Kepler-22b

Another close neighbor in the habitable zone is Kepler-22b. This body is about 150 light-years further away than Kepler-186 but has the promise of life just the same. It is about 15% closer to its sun than our Earth is to our sun, but its sun is smaller than ours, so there is a compensation effect where these two factors cancel each other out.

Subsequently, it still provides the opportunity for the planet to remain in the habitable zone. Kepler-22b has a surface temperature of 72℉. This sounds like a good vacation spot when we get to that point of space travel. For Star Trek fans, you can envision the beautiful planets the crew visited when on shore leave. Well, not so fast.

Kepler-22b might be more on its axis than Earth, meaning half of the planet may have all sunlight 24×7 and the other half may be in complete darkness for every (of that) planet’s six months. Further study has revealed that the planet may be 90% ocean or more; thereby compensating for the seasonal issues.

Additionally, Kepler-22b has been calculated to have a much stronger gravitational pull than our planet, so walking on this planet may be as hard as trying to walk briskly through water at the same speed that you would be walking on land.

But if there are creatures on this planet, intelligent or not, natural evolution may cause these beings to look much different from us. Due to the planet’s strong gravitational pull, the aliens may have budging feet full of muscles that would make the strongest man in the world look like a stick figure. They may have more than just two or four legs. Additionally, their internal organs would have to be naturally engineered to handle the physical stresses of the planet’s strong gravity; such as an overly large heart.

The Day the Earth May Stand Still

If Kepler-22b is life sustainable, it would take astronauts 635 years to get there. So since that is out of the question for us, but if there is intelligent life there or on other planets, their technology might provide a quicker way to come here and visit us. But is that what we would want?

Astromony

What Would Space Aliens Really Look Like?

May 7, 2022 admin Leave a comment

Illustration of an alien planet — Photo iStock

The Extraterrestrial Delima

Some say that we are the only intelligent life in the universe, but others would tend to differ, and if you include the calculations in our article Life in Outer Space, a Mathematical Approach, there is a good probability that they are correct.

, we are probably the only planet that has species that look exactly like us humans. The aliens would have to live under the same environmental conditions that exist on this planet. If there is just a .001% difference on their planet as there is no Earth, our alien friends could look much different.

That’s because all living things on Earth have physically adapted to this planet’s environment; such as adapting to the atmosphere, which is 78 percent nitrogen and 21 percent oxygen, as well as adjusting to the planet’s range of temperatures and seasons. The result is that we are a species that consists of two ears, two eyes, two lungs, and a bunch of other organs that keep us alive through these earthly conditions.

So the chances are very high that there isn’t a planet exactly like Earth, but some exoplanets in the habitable zone might come pretty close. Instead of saying we may be the only intelligent life in outer space, it may be more prudent to say we may be the only intelligent life that looks like us in outer space.

An Exoplanet With a Slight Change

Suppose that there is a planet revolving around a star 100 light-years from earth. We’ll call this planet Exo, but on this body, there is a slight change in its atmosphere, namely, its oxygen level is 90 percent nitrogen and 10 percent oxygen. If we use earthlings as a reference, then the species that would evolve on this planet, Exo, would need larger lungs to compensate for the low oxygen level.

Now suppose that Exo is 20% further from its star than the Earth is from our sun (Earth is 93,000,000 miles away). That would mean that it would be 18.6 million miles further away from its star as compared to Earth’s proximity to the sun. Everything would be darker on Exo and cooler as well.

Our hypothetical species would require larger eyes than us to compensate for the lack of sunlight. Needless to say, their winters will be colder, so those living in a Siberian type of weather on Exo would possibly have thicker skin than their counterparts on the warmer side of the planet (warmer relative to that planet’s environment, not ours).

What About Gravity on Exo?

The amount of gravity would be determined by the size (mass) of the planet, so if Exo is 10% larger than Earth, then the creatures living there would probably have heavier and stronger legs. Their legs may bulge out more or they may be longer than what we humans would look like, or maybe they have three or four legs. Not a far thought since thousands of species on this planet also have four legs.

For a more in-depth look at how aliens may evolve, take a look at this video below.

Time is Everything

We have discussed how the physical characteristics of alien life might look on a habitable planet similar to life here on Earth. But what about their evolution process? Did it take the same amount of time for these aliens to evolve as we did? In other words, humanoid life on Earth has been estimated period and 200 million years ago, but does that mean that creatures on other planets began their evolution process within the same time period as we did?

What Year is It?

We first have to take into account that a year on Exo would probably be different than our years. If Exo is 10% further away from its sun, then it will take longer for the planet to revolve around it, a 365-day revolution (if days are the same there) won’t work. We will estimate that it takes 400 Exo days for it to complete one of its years.

Are We the Most Intelligent of All Species in the Universe? Watch What You Say!

The above scenario is based upon a similar period it would take for beings like us to evolve on a different planet. Chances are that this would not be the case.

What if Exo was formed 500 thousand years later than it did on Earth? Well, that would mean that they would have evolved only to what we could equate as neanderthals. Now that type of communication doesn’t look promising.

But what hat if Exo was formed 500 thousand years earlier than here on Earth? That would mean that Exo’s inhabitants would have hundreds of thousands of years more time to evolve than we humans have on this planet.

If their evolution started that much earlier then we could conclude that they are mentally superior to us. If that is the case and they do (or some believe that they have already) come to Earth, will they be friendly?

We Come in Peace, Maybe.

Scientists are contemplating a new communication with ET via signals to be sent from huge telescopes here on Earth. It will be called the Beacon in the Galaxy and will contain mathematical, physical, and biological representations of earthlings, as well as our location in the Milky Way galaxy. But if aliens do find this and they equate to the scenario of advancement over us, is this a smart move? Only time will tell!

Astromony

Life in Outer Space – A Mathematical Approach

April 24, 2021 admin Leave a comment

Milky Way Galaxy — Photo by Arnaud Mariat on Unsplash

Is There Really Intelligent Life Out There?

One of our previous articles discussed the minerals of Star Trek, giving rise to the hope that there is extraterrestrial life out there, but the real discussion about ET’s existence is a loaded subject.

For this article, we are going to focus on what the mathematical formulas tell us. The ones developed by astrophysicists; in other words, what are the odds that there really is intelligent life on other planets?

As difficult as it is to wrap our heads around the sun’s fusion process, which is equivalent to 100 billion atomic bombs per second, we will go one step further and try to understand the immense size of our universe, and subsequently, come up with a formula that scientists have developed to determine ET’s existence.

So What Are the Odds?

It is estimated that there is an average of 1 – 2 billion stars in any recorded galaxy and there are over 2 trillion galaxies in the universe. If 10% of each galaxy contains a solar system, that is, it contains a star with planets revolving around it, then we can estimate that each galaxy has between 100 – 200 million solar systems, with some that may be fairly similar to ours.

Outer Space Ailen — Photo by Stephen Leonardi on Unsplash

If 1% of the stars in each solar system have a planet just distant enough from their sun where life could evolve, called the habitable zone or as some scientists like to call it, the Goldilocks Zone, we could have 1 – 2 million possible planets that could contain life. Going further, if 1% of these planets have the right ‘ingredients’ to build intelligent life, then there is the possibility that there may exist 10,000 stars that could have planets with intelligent life in each galaxy.

Cutting the odds even further, just to be more realistic, let’s take 10% of this result, which would equate to the possibility of 1,000 stars with extraterrestrial life in each galaxy.

That would mean that there could possibly be 1,000 x 100 trillion galaxies = 1,000,000,000,000,000 (1 quadrillion) planets with intelligent life. How many is that? Let’s take a look at this numerical comparison.

If we use the estimate of 200 trillion galaxies in the universe, that would mean ET may live on over 2 quadrillion planets in our universe.

On a separate note, don’t even try to comprehend how many fusion total reactions occur here every second when you include all of these stars. Fuhgeddaboudit!

What About the Scientific Formulas?

The above calculations were based on a general assumption, considering the amount of these types of objects that have been calculated or physically found in the sky, but have the experts given the possibility of extraterrestrial life serious thought?

American astronomer and astrophysicist Dr. Frank Drake developed a formula that he presented at a meeting in Virginia in 1961. It is called the Drake Equation, which calculates the possibilities of life on other worlds within our own Milky Way galaxy.

We won’t go into the calculations, but in a general sense, it is based on our assumptions above but uses trigonometry to formulate a much more explicit and precise determination of ET’s existence. For you science and math connoisseurs, feel free to give it a shot below!

The terms are as follows:

N : The number of planets in the galaxy where electromagnetic emissions are detectable
R: The rate of stars that have the ability to have exoplanets with habitable zones revolve around them
f_{p :}The fraction of those stars that actually have solar systems
n_e: The number of planets in each solar system within the Goldilocks Zone
f_l: The number of planets on where life may actually exist
f_i: The number of planets where intelligent life may exist
f_c: The number of planets that have civilizations with a technology where we can detect their signals
L : The length of time that these civilizations have produced these signals

If these calculations result in any number above zero, just maybe Men in Black had it right!

Howard Fensterman Minerals