Category: Civilization

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The habitable zone of a planet(s)

This is my unprofessional view. I do stand by it with my best knowledge of this field in planetary science. My knowledge might be outdated or wrong, resulting in me getting the wrong conclusions in this article. You have been warned.

The problem with the habitable zone of a planet

I dislike it when I see the news that a planet has been found around a star. Only to see later in that same news that the planet is a dwarf star giving out minimal amount of light and heat. There seems to be minimal requirement for live to exist in the universe. I don’t know if this has been studied in any details or if there have been any study into this matter in recent years. There is a lower limit on were life can exist and there is a upper limit on this same scale.

The lower limit and the upper limit

In my personal view this star classes can support life. There are limits within those classification.

Lower limit

Class M (?)
Class K
Class G
Class F
Class A
Class M (red giants, supergiants)

Lower limit

The lower limit of stars might support life if the conditions allow for it. This might not happen in majority of any star system that falls into the lower limit. If life exists around such planet in a star system that falls into the lower limit that life might only be plants that can deal with cold temperatures and long winters. Animal life on such planet should be expected to be limited to not existing at all. This goes both for ocean and land animal life.

Upper limit

All of this classes might have their own limit and not all star systems that have planets support life due to random reasons. No dwarf stars (class L, Y, T, M). Any star that is at the end of its life span might have had life in the past, it however should be expected to be extinct at this point in the star life cycle. The upper class of stars is more complicated as they radiate more energy out and have a shorter life span than smaller stars. A life can evolve around such star but in the time needed for it to evolve to a civilization levels are limited because of the time needed until that happen.

There’s no guarantee for life in a star system

While a star might be favourable to life that alone is not a guarantee in any way that a star system is going to have any life. A lot of things can go wrong in a planet formation that results in no life or atmosphere that can support life. I don’t know what starts life in a star system but it is a sequence of events that has to happen each time life gets going on a planet in any star system that has life.

The complex life problem

While life might exist in a star system it does not have to be animal life. There might be planets out there with nothing but plants and insects on them and no animals. What path evolution takes on each planet is based on random factors that are impossible to predict.

The Venus problem

Venus is a dead planet in more than just one way. When it formed something did go horribly wrong during its formation or soon after it formed. This seems to have happened early on and there is a good chance that life never took hold on Venus and it never had any water to start the carbon cycle. According to this article and based on measurements Venus magnetic field flares up for a short period of time, this suggests that whatever happened to Venus is related to the planet core and issues that it is having. In our solar system Venus should be full of jungle life today and possibly hosting a civilisation on its own. Something like humans or perhaps not. Whatever happened resulted in Venus resulted in Venus being a dead planet and he has remained like this for billions of years.

The Mars problem

Mars never had any life. Its too small as a planet to support life and due to a large eruption in its past its core died and along with it everything that might have been on its surface. There is a chance that before the core of Mars core died due to the eruption of Olympus Mons and other volcano activity. Other reasons for Mars core dying are also possible, among them greater heat loss due to Mars being a smaller planet. Being a greater distance from the Sun in our solar system Mars never had any chance of supporting life. In other solar systems where the planetary evolution is different and Mars sized planet might be closer to its star there is a small chance a life might exists for as long the planet is able to maintain its magnetic sphere.

The planet problem

There are many factors that have to add up for a life to happen in a solar system. Sometimes those factors exist in a solar system and sometimes they are missing in the formation process. How and why are not known to anyone and it is the biggest question that humans have unanswered. An answer might appear in the centuries ahead if humans survive current global warming crises.

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The human race is among the first intelligent species in the Milky Way galaxy

The human race is among the first intelligent species in the universe. We are not the first, since there are stars that are older then our sun and some of those have or had a high chance of evolving intelligent life. If that species is a life today is a different matter. Intelligent species on Earth might even have happened before in Earth history since it only seems to take a species to evolve intelligent over a time period of only 2,1 to 3 million years from start to finish. It only took the evolution of the human race 2,1 million year to happen from when it started and until it current stage.

Given the age of the universe and based on the assumption that population III stars did not have any matters in them to support life as we know it (carbon based), it is clear that life might only be possible in population II stars and then only in rare cases. Current population I stars (like our sun) have the best chance of evolving life due to carbon that exists in our solar system, since carbon might be necessary for life to happen. Other types of life might happen in the right conditions but it can also be assumed that those instances are much rarer than carbon based life forms, since life based on carbon can start to evolve from the basic component soon as water and the right temperature appear on a planet surface.

Time is also a big factor here. Current estimated age of the universe is 13.8 billion years. When our solar system formed the age of the universe was only 9,3 billion years. Only star systems that are older than our solar system by 4,0 billion years can be considered to have evolved intelligent life at that time. I don’t know why that is, but that might be the time frame it takes for an intelligent life to appear first time around on a plant. After that it might re-evolve several time if the first attempts dies out for any reason. Current evident don’t suggest that has happened on Earth, at least there are no traces in the fossil record that suggest it happening on Earth until primate appeared on Earth.

What I don’t know is the number of stars in the galaxy that are older than our sun. There are few, but I don’t remember how many they are and how far they are. But given the current time frame as I see it is clear that many of those stars have already entered or have finished their red giant phases. All life in those star systems that supported life are long gone and dead. If the intelligent life in those star system did move from their native solar system before they did go nova is something I can’t possibly know.

There is a good reason why SETI won’t find aliens. They might not be out there or at best they are in earlier development stage of their civilization and their radio signal just haven’t reached us yet. As for earlier civilization there is a reason to assume that they came and went with their own solar systems (died out when their star turned into a red dwarf) or moved to a area of space that the human race is unable to detect radio waves from. Whatever the reason I don’t expect to detect any good signals from space able aliens any time soon.

Accident have happened but have been ignored with the Ross 128 signal and Wow! signal. While the Wow! signal was not ignored as such it remaines unexplained. As for the signal from Ross 128 I suspect that was a radar signal from unknown alien race that is able to travel between star systems. If they are humanoid is impossible to know, but it took the signal 10,89 years to reach Earth and it was ignored as local interference while it is clear that it never was a local interference. Only due to the reason that nothing in orbit uses the frequency range where the signal was detected on (4500Mhz – 4900Mhz). By ITU Region 2 requirements this frequency range is allocated to sight to sight communication on ground on U.S territory. It is allocated to U.S military usage according to documents that I found (the limited range is 4400 – 4500Mhz, but anything from 4400Mhz and up to 4940Mhz is allocated to the U.S government use on land and note satellite communication).

The Wow! signal might be a second species on a technical level close to our own (+70 – 100 years ahead of the human race). Not yet space ready, but at the technical level that they are able to beam out narrow signals in accordance with the idea that aliens use the 1420Mhz to communicate in space (as humans have been doing for several years now [information here]). The Ross 128 signal is from a thrid species that is at least 300+ years ahead the human race in terms of technological process.

Regardless if the actual facts of this. It is quite possible and more probable that the human race is among the first species to reach technical and intelligent level in our parts of the universe. We are probably not the first species to reach this milestone as suggested by possible evidence (Wow! signal and Ross 128 signal). If the human race ever makes a contact is a different question in it self. As it is clear that the human race first needs to avoid going extinct by its own actions and that might be harder to do in current world climate of politics, greed and power struggle. A lot needs to change in coming decades for that to happen. Global warming also needs to be stopped for the human race own survival reasons (and the biosphere as a whole in the larger view).

I am not the first person to have this idea. See NPR article.

Are We The Earliest Intelligent Life In The Universe? (npr.org)

Article updated at 00:14 CET on 25.02.2018. Minor spelling error fixes.

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KIC 8462852 (Tabby’s Star / Boyajian’s Star)

The star called Tabby’s Star / Boyajian’s Star but has the science name of KIC 8462852 dimmed few days ago, it’s increasing its brightness again as I write down this words. While it is not known what is creating this dimming. It is my view that following ideas are not possible, because they are just in the realm of fiction and are going to stay there.

Impossible

  • Dyson sphere is the idea that a space able civilisation is able to build a sphere of some type around its host star to shield it and the planets inside it. This idea has several flaws, one of the biggest is gravity, as such sphere would inflict a gravity equal to its size (squared). Then there is question about planet orbits, some planets have orbit that would cross such sphere path and other things. Then there are things like comets, space weather and wind.

What might be possible

  • Some type of alien civilisation has built other types of mega structures around the star. This seems unlikely as such structure would require massive resources. This seems unlikely, as such activity might be detectable by RF signal activity. No RF signal activity has been detected by SETI so far, making this a unlikely option.
  • Draining the star of its energy (hydrogen). It might be possible that some alien civilisation is draining the hydrogen from the star for energy use propose. Such activity would not leave a lot or any RF signal activity. But I find it quite difficult to imagine the scale of such activity to drop the star light by 20%.*

* I think this is mostly my idea that I was discussing on Ars Technica forum. It didn’t go well into the people there that didn’t understand the concept of what I was talking about. If this is the case, a helium flare might appear soon as the hydrogen is drained from the star (it might not happen due to this type of star). To my knowledge that has not yet happened. Making this idea improbable, but not impossible at the moment. Time is soon going to tell if this is the case, as older data suggests that current behaviour has been going for at least 100 years, possibly longer.

Like the rest of the science community I don’t have any idea about what is going on at KIC 8462852. Only research and observation is going to make that clear. Based on earlier pattern, a short dip that happened few days ago is soon followed by a longer dip in brightness. I’ll try to monitor the news reports once that happens to see if I can get any new data about what is going on at this star.

The light year distance to KIC 8462852 is around 1300 years, so current sequence of events took place around the year 717 on Earth.

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Wormholes discovered by accident

This blog is only updated once in a while. I can’t do research into space yet, so I don’t have a lot to write about here. There are few exceptions to that and this is one of them. What this article is about is speculation and at the moment is not a fact. What I write here are my own ideas, not yet proven as scientific fact. If they do become fact in it’s own time I do not know. It is also important to note that information here might be wrong, research data might be faulty [I don’t do the research into this signals] or the study in question might be wrong. This however does not change my view on wormholes and space travel in general, even if aspects and technical details might change with progress and more research and data.

There have been several news reports about “Fast radio burst” in recent years. At the moment this radio signals are a mystery to science. Since it does not fit into the groups of known stellar phenomenon. For me the story is different. I know what this is, and what has been discovered are wormholes (also known as Einstein-Rosen bridge) [link 2] being created. The event horizon of the newly formed wormholes gives a burst of radio wave around the hydrogen line (1420Mhz). I am not sure why that happens, one idea that I have is creation of wormhole somehow creates hydrogen in the process. Creating a wormhole requires a technical level that nothing on Earth currently is able to do and at current process is good 20 – 60 years away just for the basic work to be done in this field of wormhole technology (it doesn’t exist yet far as I know). It is my view that any civilization able to create wormholes is able to travel long distances in space.

For the wormhole creating it self, the rule that I have in my maths is simple. More the distance requires more energy, for every 10 light years travelled the energy requirement is doubled and for every 100 light years travelled the energy requirement are around ten folded. For event horizon of a wormhole to give out as much energy as the sun in a month the beings that are travelling that distance must be coming from up to 2300 light years away, the distance might even be slightly longer then that. As for detecting wormholes in nearby neighbourhood to our solar system that should not be difficult, as mentioned earlier, the longer the travel with the wormhole more energy is needed. This also works the other way, the shorter the distance less energy is required. If any wormhole travel is taking place close to our star system is not something that I would know. Last known signal that is even remotely close to our star system is the famous Wow! signal. I don’t know what the distance of the Wow! signal is in light years.

The reason for wormholes is simple. To travel long distances in space the limits of light speed and dangers need to be removed. That can only be done with wormholes, travelling with subspace is not something that works (unlike what Stargate SG-1 tells you, it is just nice science fiction) in reality. At least I have looked into that and the maths is all showing sudden death and destruction once unstable subspace is entered.

As for monitoring our nearby space for any new wormholes it is my view that should be done and in part that is already being done with the research into Fast radio bursts that are now being detected. Such monitoring should alert the human race if any space ship of technical advance race travels close to our solar system. It is clear in my mind that no alien would come to Earth. Since Earth is primitive compared to any alien race that is able to travel outside its home world and go more then 1 light year away from it.

Study into this radio signals. I don’t know if it has been peer-reviewed yet (it might not yet been peer-reviewed).

Discrete steps in dispersion measures of Fast Radio Bursts (pdf document)

News items

Is this ET? Mystery of strange radio bursts from space (newscientist.com)
Extragalactic radio burst puzzles astronomers (2007, newscientist.com)
Mathematical Pattern Found in Enigmatic Radio Bursts, But It’s Not E.T. (phenomena.nationalgeographic.com)

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Exoplanet found around Alpha Centauri

This has been in the news all week. Scientists have found exoplanet around Alpha Centauri-B. This planet is in highly close orbit around Alpha Centauri-B. While this planet it self does not support life in any form. It opens up the possiblity that Alpha Centauri-A and B might have planets with life on them. Earth has life and is not so unique in my view.

This also makes Alpha Centauri A and B prime targets for searching alien civilizations close to our own solar system. But Alpha Centauri is just 4.37 light years away from Earth. But that means any radio signals are just 4.37 months reaching Earth (give or take). This also makes for a better signal detection at this short distance. If there is any civilization on Alpha Centauri A or B we have no way of knowing it state of technical levels. They might be more advanced then us, or they might be less advanced then us. Or they might still be in caves and really primitive. There is no way to know for sure. There is also a possibility that just life might exist in Alpha Centauri A-B system. But without any civilization at all. There is also chance if there was a civilization in the Alpha Centauri A-B solar system that it is long gone for one reason or other. Whatever the case actually is. This planet is a good hope that more planets might exist just 4.37 light years away from Earth.

But one thing is clear. We are never going to know without science studies in that direction. It is also my view that we need to study our closest star better then we already do. This applies mostly to the stars that are close to our own sun in size and brightness. Since the chance of finding planets like our Earth is highest around such stars. Rather then larger and heavier stars. Like blue giants and such. In that case. I think there might be planets around Sirius (8.6 light years away). But I do not think any such planet is likely to have any life on them. But I might be totally wrong in this estimate. But the only way to find out for sure is to study space, as it is human race most important step into the future.

News about this discovery

Next Door Neighbors? Earth-Sized Planet Discovered in Nearest Star System to Us (Universe Today)
Exoplanet around Alpha Centauri is nearest-ever (BBC News)

Technical information

Alpha Centauri 3 (Solstation)
Sirius 2 (Solstation)
Alpha Centauri (Wikipedia)

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More planets out there with life then originally predicted

According to recent news on BBC News there could be more planets out in the galaxy and every galaxy out there. This are the results from new computer model into this matter. This however does not say anything about if any of this planets has civilization out there. But that is always an possibility. What this actually means in reality is hard to know for sure. But one thing is clear. There is more life in the universe then we can imagine.

If people want to check more on this subject. They can read the whole deal in BBC News article.

More planets could harbour life (BBC News)

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Scale of the human race in perspective to the universe

On Wikipedia there is an interesting image that shows the universe in scale to the Earth and our solar system. This picture clearly shows how small the Earth and the human race really is. Petty things like religion and skin color are utterly meaningless when it comes down to it. I just wish more humans would release that. Since then we would at least have peace among humans for once.


The scale of the universe. Click on the image for full size. The image is from Wikipedia. Image is made by Andrew Z. Colvin under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

This image also shows that human race needs to increase the research into deep space exploring. Just exploring the local solar system for new information is simply not enough today. If nothing else. We need to know what is out there. Before it finds us. Since I am in no doubt that what is out there in the universe is both going to be good and evil.

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The need for deep space exploration

While the human race has been busy studying with problems it’s solar system for several decades now. We have not yet started to explore with problems our distant star neighborhood. The reasons for lack of such exploration are two mostly.

The first one is lack of technology. But before the year 1970 the chance of exploring space with something else then just telescopes was limited at best. But technology moves forward. By the year 1970 spacecrafts where first advanced enough to go into the solar system. Rather then just orbiting the Earth or being in geosynchronous orbit. The first probes to go out into the solar system where the Pioneer spacecrafts. Then Voyager spacecrafts did go out into the solar system and are now leaving it. Today the newest spacecraft to be on it’s way out of the solar system is the New Horizons spacecraft. But it is going to go by Pluto in the year 2015 and give up new information about that planet. Along with high resolution images of it and it’s moons.

The second problem is distance. But past and current technology has now allowed us to send spacecraft out of our solar system without it taking years. Long running projects also have money issue, people issue. Along with technological issues on it’s own. Today it takes the spacecraft about 15 years to reach the edge of our solar system. If no other flyby are made on the way. Communication is also problem. The more distance between spacecrafts and Earth the longer time communication takes. For instance, New Horizons round trip communication today takes around 6 hours to complete (3 hours each way). When it reaches Pluto. That times has gone up to 12 hours both ways (6 hours each way). There are also no spacecraft to handle communications between points in our solar system. So all communication has to go directly between Earth and the spacecraft in question. This makes communication often impossible or hard at best in some cases. NASA deep Space Network does good job at keeping contact with those spacecrafts that are out there today.

But for the future. It is my opinion that long term plan needs to be put into action to secure communications inside the solar system with future space mission. Regardless if they are inside the solar system or outside it. But one thing is sure. In the future, it is going to be necessary for the human race to send spacecrafts outside the solar system to make discoveries. What we might find may change the human race forever. It is simply not enough to explore space with telescopes today. Unmanned spacecrafts needs to be sent out there to explore while humans cannot do so directly. We need to know what is out there. Sooner being better then later for the human race.

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Do alien visit Earth ?

This is a simple question. With no simple answer. Currently there are no evidence what so ever that aliens have ever visited planet Earth. But given how primitive human civilization is. It is not hard to imagine that aliens going past our solar system to ignore us, or just take long range scans. Be that from far away from the Earth or in a high orbit above the Earth where we can not detect them.

But as mysteries goes. This one is going to be solved one day. I not know yet if I am going to see that day. But one can hope do so.

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Do alien detected our radio signals ?

The question can we hear aliens has an other side to it. That side is do alien hear our radio signals. This question has been asked and little bit answered also. It has been calculated how far out the radio signals go out from Earth in every direction. As the technology goes it does not look good for radio signal from Earth. Given the bandwidth that radio signal has to have to use in order to carry signals, as picture and audio to be detected.

In terms or radius on where our radio signals can be detected. I would not be surprised that common radio signals are not detected outside our own moon. The strongest one might be detected on Mars or even Jupiter. But beyond that they are not going to be detected in my option. So if aliens detect our radio signals, they are going to get rather close to Earth to do so.

This is might also be the reason why we here on Earth are not detecting any signals from other civilization. The transmission used on those worlds, if they are there to start with are not strong enough to reach our solar system. Our only chance of detecting alien signals might be to look for narrow band signals that can travel an long distance in interstellar space. But for us to find alien radio signals. We have to go out there and look for them the hard way.

There most likely is an alien civilization close to our own solar system. But we are just unaware of it due to the fact that we are unable to detect its radio signals due to distance. If they are present to start with. As not all alien civilization might be using radio signals, or be on that technical level yet.

Reference.

Section – F.06 How far away could we detect radio transmissions?

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Do we get alien signals ?

I have found that in all the debate about possible life and possibility of an civilization out there. The main problems is that we do not know if the civilization out there is using any radio technology. Even if they do. The question also remains if we get any of there signals to Earth. As the laws of physics say, radio signals can only go so far given certain amount of signal strength in any given radius. This is the complex way of saying that we might not be getting any signals because we are outside the coverage area of the civilization that we are looking at. Some civilization out there might not even be on the radio level technology at current moment. Even if we are there at present time.

I do not know if SETI or related areas have looked at the stars (solstation.com) in less then 20 light years distance from Earth. There have been some speculations on the distance on how far away the signals need to be so they can be detected. But one thing is for sure in my mind. It is almost impossible to detect an radio signal from other civilization if they are using anything remote close to our own technology.

The question on passing ships is an big one. But then an one-off signal should be expected and it might not repeat at all. It is also impossible to know how and often alien ship would travel trough our own solar system.

This is all just questions that are going to be answered one day. But it might take few more decades until it this questions are answered.

Blog post updated at 01:53 UTC on 11.01.2012.

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The search for civilization out there

For many decades now there has been a group of human been searching for signs of civilizations out there. So far there has not been any luck with it. Why I do not know. But I do think that how this search is done might be wrong. That is searching just one band of 1420Mhz, or the Hydrogen line (wiki). While this frequency might be optimal for space travel, I do not believe that is being used on a planet. The reasons being the same as here on Earth. It is impractical for communications.

I base my suggestion on the space travel and 1420Mhz on the Wow signal that was detected in the year 1977.

To search for civilization it is my opinion that the search must be done on frequencies that we human already use. But the problem here is the local noise, that is transmitters on Earth. But I do not think that problem cannot be crossed with good mapping of the local area frequencies in use. Along with frequencies that might bonce off Earth atmosphere.

The estimated range for radio signal from Earth is about 20 light year according to this study here. So mapping of yellow stars and similar types of suns in that range should not be too difficult. As the nearby stellar neighborhood is well known and has been for a long time now. But the question that remains unknown is if there is a civilization out there, does it have the technology to broadcast strong radio signals out into space. It might well be that a civilization is out there, but it might be on a stage that is equal Earth in 19th Century, or something earlier. Or they might well have passed us on the technological level and have stopped broadcasting radio signals into space.

This are all questions we might not get answer to. But if a radio signal is found from a alien civilization is found. It might give us a great idea what is out there. But I am sure that getting that type of signal is not going to be easy. In fact, I am sure that it is going to be real hard to do so. But it is not impossible, just hard. I am up for that challenge from my point of view. I hope that others are too.

I find that there are enough space blogs that cover the natural phenomena that can be found in Space. But nobody covers this aspect of space, since it has been made ridiculous for many decades now. We might not be able to communicate with a alien civilization out there. But we sure can listen to them if we find there signal.

This is what I am going to do with this blog. It took me long term to figure out what to do with this blog. The course has now been set. I welcome all my new readers to this blog. You know now what this blog means and what it stands for. I hope that you enjoy to read this blog, as I have writing it.