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Exoplanets May Have Too Much Water for Life
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Astronomers first announced the discovery of three exoplanets around TRAPPIST-1 in 2016. Then, a year later we learned of four more exoplanets in the system. TRAPPIST-1 is only 39 light years away, making it an excellent way to study the behavior and conditions on exoplanets. While all the planets are similar in size to Earth (no gas giants have been detected), only three of the planets (TRAPPIST-1e, f, and g) are orbiting at a distance that would allow them to have liquid water.
| Having liquid water is a requirement for life as we know it, but it turns out you might want some land, too.
All the TRAPPIST-1 planets were discovered with the transit method. A telescope watches a star for small dips in brightness. These dips can give away an exoplanet passing in front of the star from our perspective. That can tell us how large an exoplanet is. By watching the way transit signals vary over time, astronomers can also estimate an exoplanet’s mass.
| Put those together, and you’ve got an approximate density.
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/265935-trappist-1-exoplanets-may-much-water-life
| I learn more interesting subjects on this thread than on my news dedicated App, thanks
| Too little water, too much water.. I think life is just being picky at this point.
| Life is like a woman : a bitch, but sometimes she can make you feel good
| It's interesting that these planets have that much water, but this information isn't really useful to know of they have or life or not (as the article itself said). The title could have been less clickbaity
| Sorry for the typos, im on mobile
| The Universe is HUGE. We once thought we were unique. The Sun was special. Water was rare.
No matter how absurdly low probable it seems for life to exist elsewhere, it makes little sense in the Universe. We might even be the only high life form in our Galaxy which is sufficiently Huge as well. But even if only one planet per galaxy hosts high lifeforms, still has trillions of those. It also means they will never know about each other. Because distances involved are grotesque too.
| Another fact to be aware of is time and simultainty. Multicellular life on Earth is roughly 500 million years old, mammals around 90 million. Oldest Hominin around 6 million. Sapiens 200 000.
So now, what if at 80 000 ly distance, there existed multicellular life 2 billion years ago? Or what if a planet will become hospitable to life in the Andromeda Galaxy (2.5 million ly distance) after 50 mil. years?
Suddenly detection is a bit trickier for not being there at the right time.
| >>202908
But once it starts, wouldn't it keep going? The real problem may be that intelligent life strong and smart enough to dominate a planet's ecosystem and develop technology may be its own worst enemy, and the only reason we detect no signs of intelligent life is because any life that advanced may have a short lifespan.
Look up the Fermi Paradox for a better explanation.
| >>204578 Life could start but intelligence is not a requirement or a given. By high lifeforms I meant complex organisms. Not only intelligent beings are their worst enemy within a few million years timespans, on Earth at least it came to dominance by luck's help. The dinos were wiped clean by a cosmic event after 200 million years of dominance during Earth's best. If that didnt happen, the last 65 million years would have been exactly the same.
| But even if ultimately at some point intelligence will arise, getting out of the home stellar system is problematic. No matter how common it is in scifi, interstellar travel and colonisation is next to impossible, again because of the tremendous distances involved. Same planetary system colonisation is childplay in comparison, interstellar is many orders of magnitude more problematic.
And because of that, it is each system's star life stages that will put an end to it.
| Earth for example has at most another billion years of time as a hospitable planet for life. It will be too hot beyond that point, on its way to resemble Venus of today, while the Sun will be swelling into its red giant stage of life.
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| The TRAPPIST-1 system seems at first to be a good place to look for extraterrestrial life. It has seven rocky planets roughly the same size as Earth, and some of them are in the “habitable zone” of the star where liquid water could exist on the surface. Now, researchers from School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University say there might actually be too much water for the TRAPPIST-1 planets to harbor life.