Category: Exploration

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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 My knowledge might be outdated or wrong, resulting in me getting the wrong conclusions in this article.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 needs to send space probes everywhere

The current thinking, mostly due to budget limitation is to only send space probes to certain targets. Like Jupiter, Venus, Mars and so on. The main reason for this is limited budget and the thinking to only explore what we currently see. That needs to change. In my view it needs to change because while we are just targeting special object in space we might be missing objects that are just outside our view.

What the human race needs to send out in space are general purpose space probes that are able to due the most basic of studies and measurements and that are able to take the necessary images if something of interest is found. What also needs to be done is to figure out a way to make space probes faster and to allow them to go longer on less fuel. This needs to happen and the science of exploring space has to change and move forward from its current status. The human race needs to start exploring space for real and reach to objects that are outside our own solar system so that we know what is there before we send humans out to explore deep space.

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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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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.