The future is largely unseen and fluid.Who knows what we will achieve then? We can start by looking at what we’ve already accomplished in science and technology and what accomplishments can be improved upon, where we can make innovative leaps in how technology can work for us. When it comes to exploring the last frontier – space, the possibilities are only limited by the laws of physics and our own collective will. We often think about exploring and even living on other planets within our solar system but let’s think this out even further. What will life be like living on alien planets? What are the challenges? The possibilities? This is truly “thinking outside of the box.” exploring and living on other planets within our own neighborhood is exciting enough but what will our future in outer space look like? Scientists say that 50 million years from now our sun will destroy itself and all of the inner planets of the solar system, so this bears some examination. Is it possible to even have such a future?
Before we get carried away we have to recognize and establish the ground rules first. Any planet that is going to be inhabited by humans will have to be orbiting the habitable zone around its star. Depending on the amount of heat it generates and the size of the star, the habitable zone of any given star could vary greatly. If it’s too close, the planet will be an inferno and no life that we are acquainted with could survive. The same problem exists with a planet that has an orbit too far from its star. We have learned a great deal about the universe by studying our own local neighborhood but because we are limited to the solar system our knowledge of conditions outside of the solar system contains huge gaps. Have scientists found other planets in other systems? Yes they have and this exploration is the first baby step in looking for other earthlike homes for humans in the future.
The search for planets outside of the solar system started in the early 1980’s. It wasn’t until then and now that such a search could happen because planets are very small in comparison to stars and emit very little light. Telescopes since then have become far more powerful. Stars can obscure them but there is still a way to detect them and that’s by studying a star’s path. While traveling along, if a star wobbles it is likely that this gravitational effect comes from orbiting planets. In 1995 the first extra solar planet was detected, 51 Pegasi b. 51Peg b is a gas giant like Jupiter but unlike Jupiter which takes 12 years to orbit the sun 51Peg b orbits its star in only 4 days and it is only 5 million miles from the star. 51 Pegasi b is being literally being fried away! There’s no way that life as we know it could grow or colonize this planet. Some scientists believe that 51 Pegasi b did not start in that system but migrated there from some other place, much like Pluto may have migrated into orbit around the sun from another place or from the Kuiper Belt. Moving on, Trace 4 is another gas giant which is twice as big as Jupiter. These hot planets of gas have some kind of internal heating source and they are challenging our way of thinking about planets and how we understand our own place in the universe. These alien planets are more common than we first realized and since the 1980’s more than 200 planets have been found outside of the solar system orbiting other stars. Pulsar planets have also been found which I will explain about later and this discovery has changed how scientists think about planet formation. Elliptical orbits are common in other planetary systems. But on our solar system circular orbits are the norm. Pluto isn’t so strange after all. Our solar system in many ways like this is unique and is one reason why advanced life resides here. One more thing to point to our special place in the universe.
Other “hot Jupiters” have winds that are unimaginable! HD 189733b has winds of up to 6000 mph! The day side of the planet roasts at 1500 degrees while the night side is 1000 degrees which means the jet streams on this planet can reach momentous speeds and power. Most of the gas giants found orbit very close to their stars, such as 5 or 3 million miles away and many of them have a locked orbit in that only one side faces the star and one side always stays in darkness. All of these things make them inhospitable to life. So are there others that we may consider? First and foremost they can’t be gas giants. Neither human or animal life could survive in such conditions much less build societies. We need to find rocky planets with water – planets that can support carbon based life forms. One very unusual planetary system that’s been found are planets that orbit a pulsar. The pulsar named PSR B1257+12 to be exact. Pulsar planets are rocky, very low in mass and rather exotic. Pulsar planets form after the supernova explosion that creates the pulsar but such planets can old no life. The radiation from the pulsar is absolutely lethal. It would be like having an extremely powerful lighthouse beam of deadly radiation constantly flashing in your face. Life would gain no foothold there and no technology that we know of could shield explorers from such an inhospitable place. So where to next?
Gliese 876d is a world around the size of Neptune and resides in the Leo constellation. It orbits around the red dwarf star Gliese 876. In fact the star Gliese 876 has a number of interesting planets orbiting it. Gliese 876d was found to have a density and other characteristics close to a water and rock super earthlike planet which is one of the things we need. It is also just within the habitable zone of its orbit in relation to its star which shows some promise. The problem is that there may be so much water that all land is submerged under it and the water molecules on this planet are so strange that the water is more like ice, not water, yet scientists claim that it is not cold. It is seven times the mass of Earth and covered in super dense oceans that aren’t quite liquid. Exploration and terraforming it would take extremely advanced complex technology to overcome the environment issues and habitation issues on the planet, let alone what it would take to travel there, but it is more promising for settlers than the super heated gas giants and the pulsar planets out there!
The search for earthlike planets is related to the search for life and exploration. Perhaps one day with the tools and the technology we have and will build in the future new scientists will find more earthlike “cousin” planets one day that might be able to host life, if with a little bit of planetary engineering. So far, scientists have found distant cousins of earth like Gliese 876d. It was once thought that the search for other planets was a crackpot enterprise. Now we know that they exist and maybe one day we can travel to them and colonize them. Who knows what spectacular finds await us out there in the deep reaches of our wondrous universe?
