NASA announces exoplanet discovery: TRAPPIST-1 planets could support water

NASA has just announced an interesting find and the media has gone mad suggesting the possibilities of the conditions for life. But wait; these planets orbit a red dwarf star, from my understanding, this means a star that has expanded to be very large, of a size even beyond the orbit of these planets, and then shrunk. So logic suggests these planets would be sterile and void, but a better question is why do they exist at all?

What I'm saying is; perhaps our understanding of stellar processes leaves a little to be desired.

On another stellar question is Pluto a planet?, it seems a new definition of planet may expand the number of planets in our solar system and reinstate Pluto.

Pluto may be considered a planet but it has an unusual orbit. The real debate as far as pluto goes is where did it come from ? If it formed in place then it is a planet but if it was towed by gravity into place then it started life elsewhere. At this point we dont really know. There are also thoughts that Mars may have been knocked into place and used to be a moon of a super Earth like planet that had blown up. This supposed theoretical planet resided where the asteroid belt is now.

The other theory is that the asteroid belt formed because the gravity of Jupiter is too great to allow a planet to form in that location, of course, this doesn't explain the moons of Jupiter. I think we can put the orbit of Pluto and this supposed planetary explosion down to Nabiru, it seems to be a convenient explanation for everything we don't understand

I love Pluto and yes it should be a planet . Since it's discovery 87 years ago it still has not completed a revolution around the sun . It is the little planet that could saying 'I think I can ;I think I can" as it chugs along .

If a single star has so many planets then what are the odds there is no other life out there ?

Hello clete:

Here's the answer to the BIGGER question. Now, I'm NOT a scientist, but I CAN add. I've also done a bit of gambling, so I understand odds..

Given that there are MORE stars in just our own galaxy, than there are grains of sand on EVERY beach in the entire world, AND that there are MORE galaxies in the Universe than there are grains of sand on every single one of these beaches, ONE would have to believe in a JILLION to ONE long shot. I wouldn't take that bet.

Clearly, the Universe is RIFE with LIFE..

excon

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Originally Posted by paraclete

from my understanding, this means a star that has expanded to be very large, of a size even beyond the orbit of these planets, and then shrunk

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A red dwarf is simply a small-mass star, somewhere between 5% and 50% of the mass of our sun. It's rate of fusion is less than the sun's so the star is cooler and hence red. I think you're thinking of a white dwarf star, which is the remnant from a red giant. I would agree with you that planets orbiting a white dwarf would be sterile cinders, if they could exist at all.

The thing that surprises me is that the "Goldilocks zone" for where temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold for a planet to sustain life is really not very wide (for example for our solar system it extends from about halfway between Venus's orbit and ours out to about the orbit of Mars). Having seven planets crowded into such a narrow band I would have thought would be an unstable orbital condition.

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Originally Posted by excon

Hello clete:


Clearly, the Universe is RIFE with LIFE..

excon

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Well Ex there is a big difference between the possibility of life and intelligent life with whom we can get pally. Of all the millions of species of creatures on this planet there is only one capable of contemplating the universe so the possibility it might exist proves nothing. This is not star trek where every system has a new species of human like creatures. The conditions in space are very dangerous for planets, let alone people. Surely, even in our own neighbourhood, we should be aware of how rare our existence might be. So far we have observed infinite diversity so why is the media running off again with talk of ET

Of course no one knows whether there is life out there, and if there is, whether there is any intelligent life. So it's all a guess. The famous Drake Equation is an attempt to quantify the likely number of intelligent life forms in the Milky way Galaxy - see:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation . Two of the most contentious factors in that equation are f_L = the probability of life forming on a planet that could sustain life (i.e on a planet in the Goldilocks Zone about a star), and f_i = the probability that life evolves toward an intelligent life form - meaning capable of radio communications. The only data point we have for either value is what we know about life on earth, so all we truly have are opinions. So here's mine: given that life evolved on earth relatively shortly after conditions became sustainable, it would seem that the formation of life on planets that are habitable is probably not too uncommon. And given that life on Earth has involved a steady evolution toward more complex life forms it seems almost inevitable that if life exists intelligence would ultimately arise. In our case that process took about 2 billion years of evolution, but we have no idea whether that's typical, or extremely fast or extremely slow. But even if you assume that only a very small percentage of planets with life ever evolve to achieve intelligence before the star that sustains them runs out of fuel, that still leaves huge numbers of planets in the Milky Way that have achieved it. Multiply that by the 100,000,000,000 galaxies in the observable universe and, well, you get the idea. Again just an opinion.

On a side note - one of the things I liked about the movie "Arrival" is that the aliens look nothing like us - they are not cute bipeds a la ET, or any of the aliens on "Star Trek" or "Avatar," or even the almost-human-looking creature from "Predator." And they don't breathe earth air or speak like us. Why is it that most aliens as depicted by Hollywood are cute, come as male and female in essentially human form, and even know how to speak English?

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Originally Posted by paraclete

Well Ex there is a big difference between the possibility of life and intelligent life with whom we can get pally. Of all the millions of species of creatures on this planet there is only one capable of contemplating the universe so the possibility it might exist proves nothing

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Hello again, clete:

I'm not trying to prove anything. I'm just telling you what the numbers are. That they don't lead you to make the same conclusion I do, tells me you DONT understand those numbers. Not surprised, really.

excon

Hello again, clete:

Here.. Lemme blow your provincial mind.. What those numbers tell me, is that ANYTHING that CAN happen, HAS happened, and it's happened 1,000's of times. And, the odds against any one of those instances happening were still billions to one..

As I said, the Universe is RIFE with LIFE - intelligent life to boot.

excon

Hello Ex:

I gotta object to this one:

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Originally Posted by excon

ANYTHING that CAN happen, HAS happened,

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No. This would require that the universe is infinite in size (it's not) and/or that it is infinitely old (it's not).

If you two would read the Wikipedia article I linked to you will see that modern estimates for the number of planets with intelligent life in the Milky Way ranges from (meaning there is unlikely to be another intelligent life form anywhere in the observable) to N= 156,000,000. So it's impossible to know which one of you is right. Again, there are no facts to support either side, only opinions.

You can't tell Ex he only has an opinion, he is a believer in ET, for Ex evolution is a given even though it is only a theory

What seems to be missing here is that on our world there have been rulers that supressed technologies that other societies had invented. If our world had developed on a sliding scale without inhibition then who knows where we would be at. Just look how far we have come in just 100 years. Now imagine you have a world that embraces technology and has been on an upward curve for 1,000 to 10,000 years. With everything we are begining to know about the universe and the scale that we are ramping up to the stars it wont be long before we ARE the ET's.

I haven't followed all the new on this subject that closely .I certainly did not hear any report of 'intelligent life.' There could be of course . But it could be that we are the most 'intelligent' life form in the universe. My best guess is that there is some intelligent life in Andromeda Galaxy looking through their telescope and asking if there may be intelligent life in that Milky Way.

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Originally Posted by paraclete

for Ex evolution is a given even though it is only a theory

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Hello again, clete:

Nope. Wrong.. BUZZ.. BEEP.. Your ignorance is showing.. Church is NOT a good place to learn your science..

A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such fact-supported theories are not "guesses" but reliable accounts of the real world.

excon

Unfortunately ex your knowledge of science is limited. A Theory is a set of assumptions which must be tested and lead to results being reliably repeated. When the results can be reliably repeated this is then called a Law. Evolution shares its status with other theories such as Relativity, but Gravity is a Law, as is Thermodynamics. No one has been able to repeat evolution, just observe differences due to environmental factors.. you would do well to examine those Scriptures you distain, you may find some interesting facts but nowhere does it say pond scum became man