Earth-like planets 'three times more likely' in Milky Way than previously thought

A new view of the Whirlpool Galaxy, one of the two largest and sharpest images Hubble Space Telescope has ever taken, is released by NASA on Hubble's 15th anniversary April 25, 2005.Handout YH/NASA/Reuters

By Alice Milliken

New research has revealed that every solar system in the Milky Way has the same elemental building blocks as Earth, making the presence of Earth-like planets more three times more likely.

Professor Brad Gibson from the University of Hull in the UK, presented the research at the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno on Wednesday, telling the gathered audience that there are planets orbiting stars in the Milky Way that have the potential to be "a lot like Earth".

He claimed that solar systems are three times more likely to have an Earth-like planet than previously thought based on their elemental make-up.

The minerals which are responsible for the landscapes of the planets in our solar system, and other systems where planets orbit stars, are made up of four elements: silicon, magnesium, carbon and oxygen.

The exact ratio of these elements to one another, and the amount of pressure in a planet's atmosphere, determines the land masses and the heating and cooling of the planet's surface, which dictates the weather and if the planet is hospitable. Too much of one or another element will produce environments unable to sustain life.

Prior to Gibson's research scientists grouped planets into three categories: those richer in carbon, those with more magnesium and silicon, and those similar to Earth.

The research, conducted with a team from E A Milne Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Hull, shows that every solar system has the same elemental building blocks as ours.

"At first, I thought we'd got the model wrong," Gibson explained at the conference. "As an overall representation of the Milky Way, everything was pretty much perfect. Everything was in the right place; the rates of stars forming and stars dying, individual elements and isotopes all matched observations of what the Milky Way is really like. But when we looked at planetary formation, every solar system we looked at had the same elemental building blocks as Earth."

The research team created a simulated model of the chemical evolution of the Milky Way. When comparing their results to previous research, which did not have the same access to technology to accurately identify chemical elements, Gibson and his team discovered that older findings were at fault.

Gibson said that after removing the outdated approaches to determining the chemical structures of planetary systems, which involved focusing on larger planets that orbit brighter stars and produced a 10-20% scientific uncertainty, "observations agreed with our predictions that the same elemental building blocks are found in every exoplanet system, wherever it is in the galaxy".

However, despite these updated findings, our own solar system exemplifies how not all planets with these building blocks have the potential to sustain life. "We only need to look to Mars and Venus to see how differently terrestrial planets can evolve," Gibson concluded. "However, if the building blocks are there, then it's more likely that you will get Earth-like planets – and three times more likely than we'd previously thought."


http://europe.newsweek.com/earth-like-planets-three-times-more-likely-milky-way-previously-thought-330122

Is the Sun Going to Sleep?

Suspicious Observer:

This Members-Only content from Suspicious0bservers.org has been shared on YouTube because it describes and frames what is probably the single most significant heliophysics discovery of the year. The subject of a coming grand minimum, despite some of the experts’ concurrence and the data suggesting only one near-term outcome for the sun, has drawn controversy from many in the heliophysics community; I have fallen on the side of a coming grand minimum and am not shy about my praise for this mathematical model. I don’t like most models; they tend not to match observational data – this one does.

There is Alien Life on Comet Philae according to Scientists

by Ivan Petricevic

According to a statement from two leading astronomers, the evidence of extraterrestrial life on the Comet carrying the Phiale Prove through space is “unequivocal”.

It seems that nowadays the question isn’t if there is life elsewhere in space but rather where it is. According to leading astronomers, some of the mysterious features of the 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet can be tagged as Aliens. Researchers point towards the organic-rich black crust and that there might be living organisms beneath an icy surface.

Mysteriously, the Rosetta spacecraft which is orbiting this strange comet has picked up abnormal clusters of organic material which according to scientists, resemble viral particles.

Sadly, neither the Rosetta Spacecraft not the lander probe located on the surface are equipped with adequate systems to search for life.

Astronomer and astrobiologist Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe said: “I wanted to include a very inexpensive life-detection experiment. At the time it was thought this was a bizarre proposition.”
The views of Professor Wickramasinghe are shared by colleague Dr Max Wallis, from the University of Cardiff, who believes that comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenkoand others like it might be a suitable “home” for microbes which are similar in nature to the “extremophiles” which inhabit most of the inhospitable regions of the Earth.

Computer simulations have demonstrated that Professor Wickramasinghe and Dr Max Wallis are right about the presence of life beneath the surface of the Comet.

Prof Wickramasinghe said: “What we’re saying is that data coming from the comet seems to unequivocally, in my opinion, point to micro-organisms being involved in the formation of the icy structures, the preponderance of aromatic hydrocarbons, and the very dark surface.

“These are not easily explained in terms of pre-biotic chemistry.

“The dark material is being constantly replenished as it is boiled off by heat from the Sun. Something must be doing that at a fairly prolific rate.”

 

“They might be viral particles,” said Prof Wickramasinghe.

“The current estimate for the number of extra-solar planets in the galaxy is 140 billion plus. Planets that can harbour life are really quite abundant in the galaxy, and the next neighbouring system to us is only spitting distance away. I think it’s inevitable that life is going to be a cosmic phenomenon.

“Five hundred years ago it was a struggle to have people accept that the Earth was not the centre of the universe. After that revolution our thinking has remained Earth-centred in relation to life and biology.

“It’s deeply ingrained in our scientific culture and it will take a lot of evidence to kick it over.”

From: http://www.ancient-code.com/there-is-alien-life-on-comet-philae-according-to-scientists/

A Decade Later, New Horizons Spacecraft Approaches Pluto, At The Edge Of Our Solar System

New Horizons is nearing the apex of its decade-long journey.

The National Space Society put together a video below,  posted to reddit by Stark_Warg, and it didn’t take long for it to reach the front page. It’s a breath-taking video that lays out some of the most impressive space-exploration milestones we’ve reached, and when we reached them. We now approach Pluto, a frontier that is as yet unexplored. Watch the amazing video below.





This Article is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and AnonHQ.com.

Source: Collective Press

Darpa is Attempting to Turn Mars into Earth 2.0

By Kate Hudson

Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) said it is possible to modify a planet’s atmosphere to make life happen. They are working on a terraforming technology to create the conditions needed for human to habituate.

Martian environment would be introduced to a large amount of organisms to make the surface suitable for humans living.

Alicia Jackson, the deputy director of Darpa’s Biological Technologies Office in Virginia said “For the first time, we have the technological toolkit to transform not just hostile places here on Earth, but to go into space not just to visit, but to stay.”

This “toolkit” will include hereditarily designing organic entities of different types, of which there are up to 30 billion on Earth. On Earth, most synthetic biology projects utilize only two right now - e. coli and yeast.

Jackson added “I want to use any organism that has properties I want - I want to quickly map it and quickly engineer it.”

A recently created software called DTA GView, named the 'Google Maps of genomes,' will help researchers associate data on organisms. In addition, the ultimate objective is to pick organisms with particular qualities to make something with certain features. For instance, it has been guessed that some could be bio-engineered to haul certain gasses out of the Martian environment - like carbon dioxide - and make nitrogen and oxygen. Both are bounteous in Earth's atmosphere - and would be required for any people planning to inhale on Mars without a spacesuit.

Nasa has toyed with the thought before; a year ago, they divulged the Mars Ecopoiesis Test Bed idea, which would make biological communities fit for supporting life within biodomes on Mars. But, Darpa's innovation would innovative liveable situations outside in the open air on the Martian surface.

From: http://bizlifes.net/space/915-darpa-is-attempting-to-turn-mars-into-earth-2-0.html

NASA discovers 715 new planets, including four that could host life

AFP Photo / NASA / JPL-Caltech

Astronomers have announced that 715 new planets have been discovered outside the Earth’s solar system, including four planets that are more than double the size of our own. This discovery boosts the number of known planets in our galaxy to over 1,700.

The newly discovered planets were all found in multi-planet systems and most are relatively small. Scientists found planets - all of which orbit 305 stars, making up what are known as planetary systems - when they were analyzing the observational data obtained by NASA’s Kepler space telescope.

“We’ve almost doubled today the number of planets known to humanity,” Jack Lissauer, a NASA planetary scientist, said Tuesday during a press conference with reporters.

Kepler was first launched in 2009 and spent four years waiting to see what bodies would float by when the telescope was pointed at 160,000 target stars.

For Kepler to discover a new planet it must be perfectly aligned with a star in the telescope’s view, something that is made especially difficult by the fact that planets orbiting a greater distance from their parent star are far less likely to be found. When a planet and star do successfully align with the telescope it is known as a “transit.”

NASA’s announcement became even more exciting when the researchers said that at least four of the planets, the same ones that are roughly 4.5 times larger than Earth, exist in orbits that are within a star’s habitable zone, or the “Goldilocks zone.” At such a distance these planes could host liquid water and, potentially, life.

The announcement Tuesday covered only the first two years of Kepler’s study, an indication that the existence of many more planets could be announced in the future.

“We’ve been able to open the bottleneck to access the mother lode and deliver to you more than 20 times as many planets as had ever been found and announced at once,” Lissauer said. “Although we’ve gotten the big numbers this time, when we have a full four years of Kepler data that will have more planets in the habitable zone. We need more transits.”

The jump in discoveries can be attributed to a new verification technique that NASA uses to examine potential planetary systems rather than individual planets. That method was developed when it occurred to scientists that the vast majority of planets share sibling worlds that orbit a single parent star.

NASA has said that 95-percent of the planets recently discovered by Kepler are smaller than Neptune, which is four-times the size of Earth. Sara Seager, an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Reuters that planets of this size are becoming increasingly common throughout the galaxy, at least in terms of humans being aware of them.

“Literally, wherever (Kepler) can see them, it finds them,” she said. “That’s why we have confidence that there will be planets like Earth in other places.”

Source: http://rt.com/usa/nasa-discovers-715-planets-four-948/