January 19th, 2020
Planets are overwhelmingly cool. They are celestial bodies
that orbit a star in an elliptical orbit. As much as we know, most of the stars
in the universe have planets orbiting. We know the planets in our Solar System
as ‘planets’. However, the planets that exist beyond the Solar System are
called ‘exoplanets. Lastly, there is also another type of planets, which wander
around the universe. By this, I mean that these planets do not orbit any star
and move freely in the universe. There are many planets in the universe, some
are very cold, some are very hot and some are water worlds. However, only some
of the planets in the universe can sustain life. By this, I mean that life, as
we know it can survive there without difficulties. Earth is one of these
planets. Almost all of us know why humans and many other animal species can
inhabit Earth. In this blog, I’ll explain what planets need in order to sustain
intelligent life.
Firstly, the planet should have a rocky surface just like
Earth has. Technically, it should have elements on it that are, let’s say
heavier than helium. This will help us a lot as we can easily move around,
planets can be planted and grown, the shelter can be placed easily. We will be able
to move around easily to explore the new planet and planets, as well as trees, could be benefited from.
Secondly, the planet should be revolving around a stable star, which has stable brightness. Some stars change their brightness after some centuries or even years. Therefore, the planet won’t be stable if it orbits around such a star. We also want the planet to be orbiting around a single star, not binary (two stars) which is very common. Even if the planet exists in a binary star system, the stars should be either too close or too far from each other for the stability of the planet as well as normal orbit.
Moreover, the most important thing, which we require from such a planet, is water. The planet should have liquid water on its surface. For this, the planet has to orbit its star in the goldilocks zone. Goldilocks zone is the zone around a star where liquid water can exist. If the planet is too far from its star, it’ll be very cold for water to exist in liquid form and if the planet is very close to its star, the surface would be extremely hot and the water won’t be liquid too. We can take examples of Mars and Venus. Venus is literally hell. It has a surface temperature of 462 degrees Celsius. On the other hand,
Mars is very cold and has an average surface temperature of 60 degrees Celsius.
Furthermore, we want the planet to be neither too big and dense nor too small or too dense. If the is too dense and large then it would be like, lets sat Jupiter (gas giant). On the contrary, if it is very low in density and has a small size, then it would face the fate of Mars. As I have said in one of my first blogs, Mars was once a planet like Earth. However, due to its very low density and size, it couldn’t hold on to its atmosphere. Therefore, it lost its atmosphere to Solar winds and is now a dead planet though it can be revived if we terraform it.
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| Picture credit: www.usnews.com |
Habitable planets are very hard to find but, we have still
found a lot of planets that can be inhabited by intelligent life. However, the
main problem is, how do we go to these planets. It would take us billions of
years to reach these planets. We have also found a habitable planet in the
closest star to us (Proxima Centauri) but, even traveling to this planet with
the current technology would take us almost 60,000-80,000 years. Till we come
up with technology that can help us travel to these distant planets, we will
have to wait on Earth.
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