Have you ever wondered about planets like the one in the move Avatars? You know, thought are there any planets similar to that one in our universe. Well in a way there are. You see, there are planets in our galaxy that astronomers have found that just might fit more of a realistic version of what you may have imaged. These planets are called Super-Earths and some of them may even be habitable. However, there hasn’t really been strong evidence of traces of life on these planets so far but scientists more or less just uses a specific method to test if life could stabilize itself there if liquid water could be a continuing presence because these planets are way too many light-years away for a human to successfully study.
A Super-Earth is called by a few names on occasion, such as, mini-neptunes, exoplanets, and gas dwarfs. To of my knowledge, the term Super-Earth is the most commonly used name. Also a Super-Earth, by definition, is only defined by their masses and the term, Super-Earths, also does not imply any other characteristics or properties, such as, habitability, an environment that maybe be similar to Earth itself, temperature, orbital property, geological or chemical compositions, and so on. Also Super-Earths usually have a mass within the range of one and ten times our home planet. As far as their detection goes within our galaxy it really favorably depends on the evolutionary state the Super-Earth is in at the time and since usually the evolutionary stages changes vary each one may transition faster or slower depending on its size and mass.
The most favorable state of detection for a newly found Super-Earth is its young magma ocean state that plays a part in the intense brightness of the planet that can be seen a grea...
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Our understanding of the Earth’s interior has been a focus for scientific study for multiple decades, recognised in the early 1900’s. Throughout the years, scientists have debated and quarreled over their findings, observations and theories for the most correct model of the composition and internal structure of the Earth.
High precision spectrometers such as HARPS are required to preform observations as very high signal to noise ratio. HARPS is a high resolution fiber-fed echelle spectrograph. To maximize the chance of detecting an exoplanet certain requirements have to be met by potential targets. The targets chosen to be studied by HARPS are selected from COR...
There is a cultural assumption that there are many alien civilizations in the universe. However, what do we really know about extraterrestrial life? With recent findings of water on Mars and the discovery of Trappist-1, there could be hope for extraterrestrial life out in the universe. Even though the water on Mars is frozen under the polar ice caps and Trappist-1 could be far from finding any alien life, there are still many articles supporting the research and looking forward to finding additional news. In the article “Could the TRAPPSIT-1 worlds harbor alien life?’ written by Liz Fuller-Wright, she reports the announcement of astronomers that they found a miniature solar system of seven Earth-sized planets. Furthermore, the argument is effective towards bright individuals because it makes one think about what it will be if there was actually life outside of Earth.
LAMMER, H., OFT, J. H. B., COUSTENIS, A., KHODACHENKO, M. L., KALTENEGGER, L., GRASSET, O., PRIEUR, D., RAULIN, F., EHRENFREUND, P., YAMAUCHI, M., WAHLUND, J.-E., GRIEBMEIER, J.-M., STANGL, G., COCKELL, C. S., KULIKOV, Y. N., GRENFELL, J. L. & RAUER, H. 2009. What makes a planet habitable? The Astronomy and Astrophysics Review, 17, 181-249.
It is without a doubt that the most fascinating thing about space is the possibility of life elsewhere beside Earth. It is estimated that the Milky Way Galaxy itself contains about 300 billion stars. Each star contains planets and some planets might even have moons. With these findings, the question is no longer whether life exists elsewhere. The probability that Earth is the only place where life exists in the universe is far too slim. NASA has identified many planets that have similar conditions to Earth but most of these planets are hundreds of light years away so traveling there to find out if there’s any living organism is not easy. Luckily, scientific evidences have pointed out that one of the moons of Jupiter, Europa, could be one of the places where life can exist. If the theories proposed by astronomers about Europa are true, life on Europa might not even be entirely different than life near the bottom of Earth’s oceans.
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The biosphere is a closed self-regulating system that integrates living organisms with nonliving components of a planet (Lenkeit). The biosphere is part of the outer shell of a planet and includes the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere (answers.com).