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Another Earth
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Ken Tapping, December 21, 2011
In the sky this week…
> Mars rises around 11 p.m. and Saturn around
3 a.m.
> Mercury lies low in the east before sunrise.
> The Moon will be New on December 24.
In early December, the Kepler satellite, which has so far discovered over 1200 planets orbiting other stars, found a planet that could be like ours. It is just over twice the diameter of Earth, and is the right distance from its parent star to have a comfortable average temperature of about 22 degrees Celsius. Moreover, its parent star is very similar to our Sun, and appears stable and old enough for life to have possibly developed and evolved on the planet. This planet has been designated Kepler 22b. At this point we don’t know much about its atmosphere or conditions on its surface, but additional observations are planned. Kepler 22b lies about 600 light years away. Since a single light year is almost 10,000,000,000,000 km, we will not be in a position to visit for some time.
This diagram compares our own solar system to Kepler-22, a star system containing the first "habitable zone" planet discovered by NASA's Kepler mission. Image credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech.
There are at least two reasons we are really interested in finding life beyond our planet. Firstly, we would like to know that we are not alone in this huge, complicated, and scary universe. Secondly, the universe seems to be tailor-made to produce carbon-based life, like what we have here on Earth, so we would expect it to be present wherever conditions are suitable.
Celebrating the Winter Solstice:
At 12:20 a.m. EST on December 22, which is 09:20 pm PST on December 21, the Sun will reach the southernmost point in its yearly travels. This point, called the Winter Solstice, marks the time of year where we have the most hours of darkness. This occasion has been special for thousands of years. For example: Almost three thousand years ago, at this time of year, people in southwestern England would walk along the processional way to Stonehenge, seeing the great stones silhouetted against the blaze of the winter sunset. Later, the celebration was re-dedicated to the most important date in the Christian Calendar. We then modified the calendar and the celebration slipped to 25 December.
Happy Holidays to all and remember to keep looking up!
At the beginning of the universe, the main elements formed were hydrogen and helium. Stars formed from this material and produced energy by turning these into heavier elements, like carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulphur, and so on. Stars continue to do the same right now, producing additional elements when they explode. These elements are ejected by the dying stars and enrich the great clouds between the stars, where they slowly react, making water, formaldehyde, ammonia, methane and many other chemicals that are involved in the chemistry of life here on Earth. Laboratory experiments suggest that, if these chemicals find their way to a newly-formed world where the conditions are suitable, lightning and other electrical activity drives them to form aminoacids, the building blocks of proteins and life as we know it. All this suggests that carbon-based life might exist at many places in the universe, including perhaps Kepler 22b. Of course, these life-forms are unlikely to look anything like us.
