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Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Habitable Worlds
NASA ^ | March 03, 2014 | (see photo credit)

Posted on 03/03/2014 5:30:33 PM PST by SunkenCiv

Explanation: Is Earth the only known world that can support life? In an effort to find life-habitable worlds outside our Solar System, stars similar to our Sun are being monitored for slight light decreases that indicate eclipsing planets. Many previously-unknown planets are being found, including over 700 worlds recently uncovered by NASA's Kepler satellite. Depicted above in artist's illustrations are twelve extrasolar planets that orbit in the habitable zones of their parent stars. These exoplanets have the right temperature for water to be a liquid on their surfaces, and so water-based life on Earth might be able to survive on them. Although technology cannot yet detect resident life, finding habitable exoplanets is a step that helps humanity to better understand its place in the cosmos.

March 03, 2014

(Excerpt) Read more at 129.164.179.22 ...


TOPICS: Astronomy; Astronomy Picture of the Day; Science
KEYWORDS: apod; astronomy; gliese163c; gliese581d; gliese581g; gliese667cc; gliese667ce; gliese667cf; hd40307g; kepler22b; kepler61b; kepler62f; kepler63e; science; taucetie; xplanets
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To: zeestephen; cripplecreek

Venus is ridiculously hot, and that mitigates against any kind of life form as we’d recognize it. Extremophiles might, possibly, live in the extreme upper atmosphere, but they’d have to be introductions, iow, not native to Venus.


21 posted on 03/03/2014 6:14:35 PM PST by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: zeestephen

Actually I was thinking about moons orbiting large gas giants. I know some of the large gas giants found orbit neatly within their star’s habitable zones.

If you’re interested in possible flying creatures in gas giant atmospheres, you should read “Saturn Rukh” by Robert L Forward. He was an actual physicist and a conservative so his books presented a lot of good science in a fiction format.


22 posted on 03/03/2014 6:15:10 PM PST by cripplecreek (REMEMBER THE RIVER RAISIN!)
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To: zeestephen
Quite a few scientists seem to believe that Venus’ atmosphere might hold microscopic life or very buoyant life forms.

There is also the possibility of micro organism life forms, in regards some of moons of the larger outer planet's in our own system, such as Saturn and Jupiter.

23 posted on 03/03/2014 6:17:02 PM PST by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: SunkenCiv

Kepler looked at one tiny postage stamp of sky and only looked for transiting planets. Pretty amazing what it found. I was playing with the NASA Eyes on exoplanets program today and noticed that a large number of the planets found were multiple planets.


24 posted on 03/03/2014 6:18:03 PM PST by cripplecreek (REMEMBER THE RIVER RAISIN!)
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To: SunkenCiv

And not a one of them has a decent cup of coffee. Sure, a couple of them have a decent chicken fried steak, but good coffee? Nope. They kept offering me Tang, but I told them I wanted coffee. And yeah, a little cream and sugar, too. How hard is that? Build big space battle carriers, but can’t come up with a good cup a Joe. Pathetic.


25 posted on 03/03/2014 6:24:53 PM PST by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer")
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To: zeestephen

A sidebar (the Moon is about 1/100th the mass of Earth)

Your Weight on the Moon
http://www.vat19.com/brain-candy/your-weight-on-the-moon.cfm

another (Mars is about 1/8th the mass of Earth)

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_would_a_200-pound_person_weigh_on_the_planet_Mars


26 posted on 03/03/2014 6:26:25 PM PST by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: blueunicorn6

There was a time I wouldn’t ever turn down Tang.


27 posted on 03/03/2014 6:27:17 PM PST by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: cripplecreek

It’s astounding how much more is known than, say, 15 years ago, and yet detractors of this kind of research keep implying the existence of precognition regarding what we will and won’t find, or developments in propulsion. :’)

Based on the rate of increase in the number of known exoplanets, fifteen years from now they will number in the many thousands, and discernable size will drop by another factor of ten (at least).


28 posted on 03/03/2014 6:30:15 PM PST by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: SunkenCiv

Did you ever mix Tang with Ovaltine? I called it Tangaltine. Or maybe it was Ovalang. I gave it to my little Sister to drink. She named her cat after me. She calls him “Asshole”. He does kind of resemble me.


29 posted on 03/03/2014 6:37:34 PM PST by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer")
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To: SunkenCiv

Our technology is advancing at an incredible rate and its just not possible to say what will be possible a few decades from now.

It seems that every time we’ve decided a planet can’t be somewhere, planets are found there.


30 posted on 03/03/2014 6:38:42 PM PST by cripplecreek (REMEMBER THE RIVER RAISIN!)
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To: blueunicorn6

I prefer the term “domestic shorthair”. ;’)


31 posted on 03/03/2014 6:44:56 PM PST by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: cripplecreek

In 5000 years humans went from making stone tools and using them for everything, to building a scanning/tunnelling electron microscope capable of moving individual atoms. I haven’t even apprenticed in flint-knapping yet...


32 posted on 03/03/2014 6:47:07 PM PST by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: zeestephen

If the larger planets shown have an earth similar gravity, it would be due to a lower density and would probably preclude having a fractionated and molten or partially molten core to generate a significant magnetic field (a dynamo-core).

That magnetic field comes in handy for keeping the solar wind from hinking up the atmosphere and making life tougher on the surface.

While I don’t think it’s a barrier to life, it would be a lot more difficult to get established there and would probably lead to indigenous species that were quite a bit tougher than earth based life.

Higher gravity would probably mean they have the dynamo-core, so radiation would be limited to good levels at the surface, and then there could be some interesting critters in that environment too. Either super lithe/lightweight or super dense in muscle with maybe a harder material evolved for bone formation.


33 posted on 03/03/2014 7:05:18 PM PST by Axenolith (Government blows, and that which governs least, blows least...)
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To: SunkenCiv

Funny...none are blue


34 posted on 03/03/2014 9:22:46 PM PST by hattend (Firearms and ammunition...the only growing industries under the Obama regime.)
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To: SunkenCiv

Gee, with Obama around our planet is barely habitable anymore.


35 posted on 03/04/2014 1:18:54 AM PST by Bullish (America should yank Obama like a rotten tooth before he poisons the entire body)
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