Exoplanet Lifeline for future Humans
By tony leather, 15th Aug 2012 | Follow this author
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Posted in WikinutNewsScience
Determining habitability of exo-planets is in truth the new holy grail of astronomy - one of the biggest, most confusing, and important issues planetary scientists need to deal with as this century progresses.
Exoplanet Lifeline for future Humans
Dr Charley Lineweaver, along with Australian National University PhD student Aditya Chopra, claim that finding exo-planets capable of sustaining life should be top priority for humanity, because locating relatively nearby habitable worlds may be crucial for our species to survive in the long term.
The pair have been reviewing current planetary research that has been examining both earth environments which support life as well as the possible environments on other planets, of which, since 1995, more than 750 have been discovered. Even though a few are supposedly Earth-like, knowing whether or not they could sustain life is for now just an ambition.
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Determining habitability of exo-planets is in truth the new holy grail of astronomy - one of the biggest, most confusing, and important issues planetary scientists need to deal with as this century progresses, because planets on which to aim at placing future human colonies will become ever more important.
The idea that humans should stay on Earth is just not realistic, when one considers the growing population and dwindling resources of our home planet. That being so, the review by Lineweaver and Chopra's found both the two most important parameters for harbouring life are temperatures between -20°C and 122°C and the presence of water.
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Human exploration of Earth has revealed life adapted to all kinds of weird environments, even the most extraterrestrial of scenarios, leading to the very real notion that habitable planets will be found as time goes by, because of the innate adaptability of life itself.
Not that the possibility of habitable planets without life is not there, because much depends upon whether the conditions for life to form - dubbed the abiogensis habitable zone - are far more narrow than those needed for life to sustain itself.
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Life has a way of managing environments to render planets habitable, adapting to whatever conditions exist, so the priority needs to be the development of a satellite capable of studying planetary atmospheres and sending information back to us about the possibility of life there. Once we find a suitable candidate world, we need to work out how to get there, because it could well be the only way to avoid the extinction of the human race.
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15th Aug 2012 (#)
Long term view indeed. We have to build a foundation now to sustain our species - siva
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15th Aug 2012 (#)
Thanks for your star pages ...
please share emotions about my pages...cu...
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