Recently some astronomers have dramatically increased their estimates of how many planets in our little corner of the Cosmos might fall in the habitable zone around red dwarf stars! There could be as many as 60,000,000,000 such habitable planets in the Milky Way alone!
Based on data from NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft
, scientists have predicted that there should be one Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of each red dwarf, the most common type of star. But a group of researchers has now doubled that estimate after considering how cloud cover might help an alien planet support life.
“Clouds cause warming, and they cause cooling on Earth,” study researcher Dorian Abbot, an assistant professor in geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago, said in a statement. “They reflect sunlight to cool things off, and they absorb infrared radiation from the surface to make a greenhouse effect. That’s part of what keeps the planet warm enough to sustain life.” [9 Alien Planets That Could Support Life
I wonder if the Creator put some life out there as well, there would be a huge waste of space otherwise…
Finding 60,000,000 planets isn’t the problem. Getting to one and making it truly habitable for human life is a HUGE problem.
Waste from whose perspective? The notion of anything being a waste to God is a laughable one. Whether Boltzmann brain or 28 billion parsecs, it’s no matter. Easy peasy all the same. It is entirely possible that the volume and scope of the observable universe is necessary supporting infrastructure for our being.
“The Privileged Planet” goes over why a red dwarf is the wrong type of star. One reason is its habitable zone is closer and that would put the alleged habitable planet in a tidal lock with the star. One side would always face the star and the other would be facing away.
No rotation, no magnetic field, means no protection from the stars radiation. The only place there may be liquid water would be at the horizon.
A red dwarf system would not support metazoans- IOW SETI shouldn’t look towards a red dwarf for ET.
Notes towards Red Dwarfs:
Notes as to size of universe:
Does human life even really matter in such an immense universe?
Of related note:
The preceding interactive graph on the scale of the universe points out that the smallest scale visible to the human eye (as well as a human egg) is at 10^-4 meters, which ‘just so happens’ to be directly in the exponential center of all possible sizes of our physical reality (not just ‘nearly’ in the exponential center!). i.e. 10^-4 is, exponentially, right in the middle of 10^-35 meters, which is the smallest possible unit of length, which is Planck length, and 10^27 meters, which is the largest possible unit of ‘observable’ length since space-time was created in the Big Bang, which is the diameter of the universe. This is very interesting for, as far as I can tell, the limits to human vision (as well as the size of the human egg) could have, theoretically, been at very different positions than directly in the exponential middle of all possible sizes;
Verse and Music:
Related
May 2013 Cornell University
Is there a violation of the Copernican principle in radio sky?
….Why should there be such large anisotropies present in the sky distribution of some of the most distant discrete sources implying inhomogeneities in the universe at very large scales (covering a fraction of the universe)? What is intriguing even further is why such anisotropies should lie about a great circle decided purely by the orientation of earth’s rotation axis and/or the axis of its revolution around the sun? It looks as if these axes have a preferential placement in the larger scheme of things, implying an apparent breakdown of the Copernican principle or its more generalization, cosmological principle, upon which all modern cosmological theories are based upon.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.4134
Nice link lifepsy!
of note:
Cluster Spacecraft Detects Elusive Space Wind – July 2, 2013
Excerpt: A new study provides the first conclusive proof of the existence of a space wind first proposed theoretically over 20 years ago. ,,plasmasphere, a donut-shaped region extending above Earth’s atmosphere.,,
“After long scrutiny of the data, there it was, a slow but steady wind, releasing about 1 kg of plasma every second into the outer magnetosphere: this corresponds to almost 90 tonnes every day.,,,
“The plasmaspheric wind is an important element in the mass budget of the plasmasphere,,,
The plasmasphere, the most important plasma reservoir inside the magnetosphere, plays a crucial role in governing the dynamics of Earth’s radiation belts.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/re.....100106.htm
Image of Belts
http://www.eos.unh.edu/Spheres.....eto_lg.jpg
Related notes:
Here is a glimpse at how the aurora borealis is actually formed by solar flares interacting with the magnetic field which protects from :
NASA Magnetic Reconnection – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_Gny2JVqQ8
The science behind northern lights – October 2, 2012
Excerpt: ,,,(solar) flares release a burst of charged particles, or plasma, into the solar system. When they come our way, they whack into the Earth’s magnetosphere, which is made up of its own stream of charged particles. That collision causes particles to break free of the magnetosphere and cascade toward the Earth’s magnetic field lines, usually traveling toward the poles. “The aurorae happen when these high-energy particles bap into atoms and molecules in the Earth’s atmosphere, typically oxygen,” Nemiroff said. Light is emitted as part of the reaction. Those particles can also wreak havoc. “The plasma cloud can cause the Earth’s magnetic field to fluctuate,” Nemiroff said. “At worst, that can knock out satellites and even power grids.”,,,
http://phys.org/news/2012-10-science-northern.html
The Earth as You’ve Never Seen it Before: Atmosphere, Airglow and Aurora – video
https://vimeo.com/42909676
As the earth has a protective barrier, the solar system also has a protective barrier:
The Protective Boundaries of our Solar System – NASA IBEX – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O0qcQZXpII
Cosmic Rays Hit Space Age High
Excerpt: “The entire solar system from Mercury to Pluto and beyond is surrounded by a bubble of solar magnetism called “the heliosphere.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/re.....133244.htm