The Earth is a giant planet that we live in. It is a planet, which exists in the goldilocks zone of our star Sun/Sol.
The
Goldilocks Zone refers to the habitable zone
around a star where the temperature is just right; not too hot and not too cold for liquid water to exist on a planet. It seems like a big place for us to live but the increase in the population in recent times is making the earth smaller for us. By this, I don’t mean that the size of the Earth will decrease but I mean that the Earth will be inhabited by such a high population that there would be no space left for anyone else. For example, from the 18
th century till the 20
th century the population on Earth increased 1 billion, but it increased by 7 billion in the 20
th century only. Not only this but, there are many other reasons by which we are destroying this planet. Global warming is another big reason by which we are destroying our beloved planet. The average temperature is rising and it can increase to an extent on which we will be unable to live this planet. On the other side, the rising conflicts between nations could lead to wars that can destroy this planet by weapons of mass destruction e.g. the nuclear bomb. So this is why we have to find a new home for us to continue mankind. This is why nowadays many space agencies are searching for planets that could have the characteristics of our world so that we can inhabit it. We have found many planets and moons that have the characteristics of our planet Earth, but I’ll start from our own solar system. 3.5 billion years ago, there was an Earth-like planet in our solar system which had its own atmosphere, oceans, lakes and probably life. Unluckily the planet lost its atmosphere slowly and gradually until now when it has a very thin atmosphere and it transformed into a dead planet now known as Mars.
Possibly most of the Martian atmosphere has been lost to space, violently scraped from the planet by the solar wind.
The solar wind is a steady stream of particles, mostly protons, and electrons, emitted by the sun. It continues far beyond Pluto before finally tuckered out. Earth is also in its path but has a protective magnetic field, something Mars conspicuously lacks. The solar wind is deflected by Earth's magnetic field while pummeling Mars head-on. Mars has a gravitational field of
3.711 m/s²
while Earth has 9.807 m/s², which means that we will be lighter on Mars than Earth.
Then again this doesn’t mean that Mars is totally a dead planet, it has all the elements to carry life except phosphorus which means that it can still sustain life but with some hurdles. To which I will come later on. The first question is how will we get to Mars? The answer is that Nasa has decided to send the first few people to Mars in the early 2030s but another agency named
SpaceX aims to launch the first rocket carrying humans to Mars in 2024.
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| *Photo Source: Wikipedia |
SpaceX is owned by Elon Musk who is also the owner of Tesla. Now coming to the problems that we will experience on Mars and their solutions. The first problem is what will take us there and how much would it take. SpaceX will most probably use the Superheavy launch rocket and the Starship crew vehicle, which would take up to 7 months to reach Mars, as Mars is 54.6 million km away from us. The second problem is that Mars has a thin atmosphere which is why the UV radiations from the Sun would reach the red planet’s surface. These radiations are very harmful and humans can’t survive in these radiations. This is why on Mars we would have to wear space suits before going out. The second problem would be how would we get water. The solution is that in 2018 scientists discovered that Mars still has some water lakes below the surface and there are still chances of finding marine life in the water. The third problem would be that where would we live i.e. what would be our houses? Scientists are still working on finding the best designs of houses on Mars which will help in staying away from the UV radiations and we would have a place where we can take our space suites off. We probably may live underground on Mars.
All the food on Mars would be dry and we will conduct indoor vegetation for food. After Mars, the best suitable place for life is the planet Saturn’s largest moon Titan. Titan is a moon with a very dense atmosphere. Scientist landed a probe named Huygens spacecraft on Titan revealing that the moon has a rocky surface and it has ice and water. That water is also likely to have some kind of marine life. NASA will land another spacecraft on Titan in 2026 named mission Dragonfly. A drone will eject out of the probe and will study the surface of the Titan to give further information about the moon. Other than these two celestial bodies, there are no planets in our solar system which we can call home. Now if we look outside our solar system, there are many planets that we can inhabit but the problem is that they are a couple of light-years away from us which means that we can never get there in time unless we travel at the speed of light. The light speed is
299 792 458 m / s. If we compare this to the fastest speed which we have achieved
39,897 km/h (11.082 km/s, 24,791 mph) achieved by the Apollo 10 crew. This might look a lot but it is only 0.0037% of the speed of light. The planets outside our solar system are called exoplanets. The closest Earth-like exoplanet to us outside our solar system is Proxima Centauri B and it is 4.243 light-years from us. This means that if we somehow managed to take a closer look at the planet through a powerful telescope we would see 4.243 years before in time. This is because light takes time to reach from this distant object to us. The star which this planet orbit is named as Proxima Centauri and it is the closest star to us. There are many other planets that we can inhabit but I’ll mention the major ones. The next few exoplanets are some that you may have heard of. These are exoplanets from a solar system 490 light-years away from us. This is called the Kepler system and the habitable planets are Kepler-186f, Kepler-438b, Kepler-442b, Kepler-440b, Kepler-996f, Kepler-296e and Kepler-298d.
To date, NASA's prolific Kepler space telescope has discovered about 30 roughly Earth-size exoplanets in the range of orbital distances of their star at which liquid water can likely exist on a world's surface. Another solar system named as the Barnard system has a star which is host to an icy planet which is also habitable.
39.46 light-years away from us is another system named as the Trappist system which has a star named as Trappis-1 which is host to habitable planets named as
TRAPPIST-1d, TRAPPIST-1e, and TRAPPIST-1f. (A fourth planet in the habitable zone, TRAPPIST-1g, will require more observations to estimate its hydrogen composition, according to a statement from NASA). There are many other exoplanets that we can call home until we find a way to travel in the speed of light.
I went through your profile your blog looks your working on climate change and global warming keep it up boy
ReplyDeleteThank you for the feedback Sir.
DeleteHumanity will never leave this planet. There always gonna be small amount of people who own huge areas of lands but keep its prices high, and huge amount of the others, who never find enough money to buy it.
ReplyDeleteYou're right to some extent sir. I know that inter-planetary travel and then the distribution of land on other planets will be a difficult task. However, taking into account the global tragedies that humans are causing i.e. Climate change will one day, lead to massive evacuation and hence; if the technology to do inter-planetary travel is developed, everyone will be evacuated from the planet.
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