Planets orbiting Kepler 444 suggest there’s ancient life in the Milky Way

NASA’s exoplanet hunting Kepler space telescope has encountered a few problems as of late, but there’s still a mountain of data for astronomers to dig through from the last four years. Astronomers analyzing Kepler data recently uncovered something unusual — a solar system about 117 light years away in the direction of Lyra called Kepler-444 with at least five Earth-sized planets. That would be unusual enough, but this planetary system is also extraordinarily ancient at roughly 11.2 billion years.

Astronomers are intrigued by this discovery for several reasons. First, that’s a lot of small rocky planets. Kepler detects alien worlds by the transit method. It watches distant suns for slight dips in brightness that indicate a planet has passed between it and the telescope. These events can be used to calculate the characteristics of the planet, but it works best for larger worlds (super Earths and gas giants). Spotting five planets between the size of Mercury and Venus (basically a little smaller than Earth) is unusual.



Artistic Depiction of Kepler 444 with its Star

The age of Kepler-444 is also something to note. At 11.2 billion years old, the planets orbiting this star were already older than Earth is now when our sun ignited 4.5 billion years ago. The universe itself is only 13.8 billion or so years old, making Kepler-444 one of the oldest stars in the Milky Way. It would have been from the first generation of stars that dotted the sky. Kepler-444 is still very sun-like because it’s 25% smaller and cooler. That means it burns through its nuclear fuel more slowly.

Finding small rocky planets that are billions of years older than Earth suggests that advanced life may have existed in the universe for a very long time. Life on Earth might be very new by comparison. Just think, planets similar to Earth were forming more than 7 billion years before Earth formed, and some of them could have supported life. If other first-generation stars like Kepler-444 have planets, uncountable civilizations could have come into being eons before the first single-cell life appeared on Earth.

The planets orbiting Kepler-444 themselves are not able to support life as we know it. All five planets are packed very close to the parent star with orbits closer than that of Mercury in our solar system. With solar years less than 10 Earth days, they definitely stood out in the Kepler data. The surfaces of these worlds have been baked by the intense heat, reducing any organic material to cinders.

Kepler-444 isn’t a bastion of alien life, but it improves our understanding of planetary formation and points us in a new direction. Astronomers are anxious to find other ancient stars with rocky planets in hopes they might prove more hospitable to life. What if there was still something alive on one of these ancient worlds? That might sound like science fiction right now, but maybe it won’t always be — there’s still a lot of data from Kepler, and future telescopes will improve our ability to spy distant exoplanets.

Source: Geek.com

A Universe of Blue Dots? --"Water Common During the Formation of All Planetary Systems"

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The new SciFi blockbuster, Interstellar, shows astonauts from post apocalyptic earth, destroyed by what appears to be a modern dust-bowl, catapulted into the unknown of outer space in the hopes of finding a new home for the human race, only to discover an extraterrestrial tidal wave on a distant exo planet. How realistic is the premise of an alien water planet? New findings suggest it's based on solid science.
"This is an important step forward in our quest to find out if life exists on other planets," said Tim Harries, from the University of Exeter's Physics and Astronomy department, who was part of the research team. "We know that water is vital for the evolution of life on Earth, but it was possible that the Earth's water originated in the specific conditions of the early solar system, and that those circumstances might occur infrequently elsewhere. By identifying the ancient heritage of Earth's water, we can see that the way in which our solar system was formed will not be unique, and that exoplanets will form in environments with abundant water. Consequently, it raises the possibility that some exoplanets could house the right conditions, and water resources, for life to evolve."
The implication of these findings is that some of the solar system's water must have been inherited from the Sun's birth environment, and thus predate the Sun itself. If our solar system's formation was typical, this implies that water is a common ingredient during the formation of all planetary systems.

To date, the Kepler satellite has detected nearly 1,000 confirmed extrasolar planets. The widespread availability of water during the planet-formation process puts a promising outlook on the prevalence of life throughout the galaxy.

A pioneering new study has shown that water found on Earth predates the formation of the Sun – raising hopes that life could exist on exoplanets, the planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy. The ground-breaking research set out to discover the origin of the water that was deposited on the Earth as it formed.

It found that a significant fraction of water found on Earth, and across our solar system, predates the formation of the Sun. By showing that water is 'inherited' from the environment when a star is born, the international team of scientists believe other exoplanetary systems also had access to an abundance of water during their own formation.

As water is a key component for the development of life on Earth, the study has important implications for the potential for life elsewhere in the galaxy.

Scientists have previously been able to understand the conditions present when stars are formed by looking at the composition of comets and asteroids, which show which gases, dust and, most importantly, ices were circling the star at its birth.

The team of international scientists were able to use 'heavy water' ices – those with an excess of water made with the element deuterium rather than hydrogen – to determine whether the water ices formed before, or during, the solar system's formation.

Is Earth the only technologically-intensive civilization in Universe?

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A new study has revealed that the combination of earth-based science of sustainability and the space-oriented field of astrobiology can shed light on the future of technological civilization on Earth and is the planet first and only technologically-intensive culture in Universe.
Human-caused climate change, ocean acidification and species extinctions may eventually threaten the collapse of civilization, according to some scientists, while other people argue that for political or economic reasons industrial development should be allowed without restrictions.

In the paper, two astrophysicists argue that these questions may soon be resolvable scientifically, thanks to new data about the Earth and about other planets in our galaxy, and by combining the earth-based science of sustainability with the space-oriented field of astrobiology .

Astrophysicists Adam Frank and Woodruff Sullivan call for creation of a new research program to answer questions about humanity's future in the broadest astronomical context.

The authors explained that the point would be to see that Earth's current situation might, in some sense, be natural or at least a natural and generic consequence of certain evolutionary pathways.

The researchers also showed that how habitability studies of exoplanets hold important lessons for sustaining the civilization we have developed on Earth.

According to the results, studying past extinction events and using theoretical tools to model the future evolutionary trajectory of humankind and of still unknown but plausible alien civilizations could inform decisions that would lead to a sustainable future.

Source : Zee news

Planet-forming lifeline discovered in a binary star system

Artist’s impression of the double-star system GG Tauri-A.

If the feeding process into the system’s inner disk occurs elsewhere, the findings introduce many new potential locations to find exoplanets.

For the first time, researchers using ALMA have detected a streamer of gas flowing from a massive outer disk toward the inner reaches of a binary star system. This never-before-seen feature may be responsible for sustaining a second, smaller disk of planet-forming material that otherwise would have disappeared long ago. Half of Sun-like stars are born in binary systems, meaning that these findings will have major consequences for the hunt for exoplanets.

A research group led by Anne Dutrey from the Laboratory of Astrophysics of Bordeaux, France, used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to observe the distribution of dust and gas in a multiple-star system called GG Tau-A. This object is only a few million years old and lies about 450 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus the Bull.

Like a wheel in a wheel, GG Tau-A contains a large, outer disk encircling the entire system as well as an inner disk around the main central star. This second inner disk has a mass roughly equivalent to that of Jupiter. Its presence has been an intriguing mystery for astronomers since it is losing material to its central star at a rate that should have depleted it long ago.

While observing these structures with ALMA, the team made the exciting discovery of gas clumps in the region between the two disks. The new observations suggest that material is being transferred from the outer to the inner disk, creating a sustaining lifeline between the two.

“Material flowing through the cavity was predicted by computer simulations but has not been imaged before. Detecting these clumps indicates that material is moving between the disks, allowing one to feed off the other,” said Dutrey. “These observations demonstrate that material from the outer disk can sustain the inner disk for a long time. This has major consequences for potential planet formation.”

Planets are born from the material left over from star birth. This is a slow process, meaning that an enduring disk is a prerequisite for planet formation. If the feeding process into the inner disk now seen with ALMA occurs in other multiple-star systems, the findings introduce a vast number of new potential locations to find exoplanets in the future.

The first phase of exoplanet searches was directed at single-host stars like the Sun. More recently, it has been shown that a large fraction of giant planets orbit binary-star systems. Now, researchers have begun to take an even closer look and investigate the possibility of planets orbiting the individual stars of multiple-star systems. The new discovery supports the possible existence of such planets, giving exoplanet discoverers new happy hunting grounds.

“Almost half the Sun-like stars were born in binary systems,” said Emmanuel Di Folco from the Laboratory of Astrophysics of Bordeaux, France. “This means that we have found a mechanism to sustain planet formation that applies to a significant number of stars in the Milky Way. Our observations are a big step forward in truly understanding planet formation.”ast

Cassini sees sunny seas on Titan

This near-infrared, color view from Cassini shows the Sun glinting off of Titan's north polar seas.

As it soared past Saturn’s large moon Titan recently, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft caught a glimpse of bright sunlight reflecting off hydrocarbon seas.

In the past, Cassini had captured separate views of the polar seas and the Sun glinting off them, but this is the first time both have been seen together in the same view.

Also in the image:

– An arrow-shaped complex of bright methane clouds hovers near Titan’s north pole. The clouds could be actively refilling the lakes with rainfall.

– A “bathtub ring,” or bright margin, around Kraken Mare — the sea containing the reflected sunglint — indicates that the sea was larger at some point, but evaporation has decreased its size.

Titan’s seas are mostly liquid methane and ethane. Before Cassini’s arrival at Saturn, scientists suspected that Titan might have bodies of open liquid on its surface. Cassini found only great fields of sand dunes near the equator and lower latitudes but located lakes and seas near the poles, particularly in the north.

The new view shows Titan in infrared light. It was obtained by Cassini’s Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) on August 21.

 

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Popular Physicist Says , "We are alone in the universe"

The process which led to the creation of humankind on earth was a fluke - and it is highly unlikely it has been repeated anywhere else in the universe.

That is the view of English physicist Professor Brian Cox, who made the assertion in an episode of BBC's Human Universe.

Professor Cox thwarted suggestions alien life was a possibility and said he believed humans were the only form of life in the universe, despite the astronomical number of other planets in the galaxy.

The presenter and scientist, who also appeared on the ABC's Q&A program last week, blamed a series of "evolutionary bottlenecks" as the main reason no extraterrestrial life has been discovered.

"There is only one advanced technological civilisation in this galaxy and there has only ever been one - and that's us," Professor Cox said. "We are unique.

"It's a dizzying thought. There are billions of planets out there, surely there must have been a second genesis?
"But we must be careful because the story of life on this planet shows that the transition from single-celled life to complex life may not have been inevitable."

Professor Cox went on to say that the extinction of dinosaurs, believed by scientists to have been caused by a meteor impact, allowed mammals and ultimately humans to dominate the planet.

"We still struggle to understand how this happened," he said. "It's incredibly unusual.

"We're confident this only happened once in the oceans of the primordial earth. Life here did squeeze through."

Professor Cox's views are in stark contrast to those of astrophysicists Dr Timothy Brandt and Dr David Spiege of Princeton University, who last month made the claim that our best chance of finding aliens, if they exist at all, lies in the examination of plant life on planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets.

They said if alien life existed on exoplanets, it might be possible to detect traces of water, oxygen and chlorophyll.

Meanwhile, NASA has offered a more widely accepted prediction; that one hundred million worlds in our galaxy are capable and fit to host alien life.