Watching space
According to the experts, there is now a lot more sun spot activity than expected in recent months. At the writing of this article, according to Spaceweather the chance of flares remains high.
I am no experts in solar flares, I do try to monitor them, since a large solar flare is going to have impact on communications and electric grids.
This is my unprofessional view. I do stand by it with my best knowledge of this field in planetary science. My knowledge might be outdated or wrong, resulting in me getting the wrong conclusions in this article. You have been warned.
The problem with the habitable zone of a planet
I dislike it when I see the news that a planet has been found around a star. Only to see later in that same news that the planet is a dwarf star giving out minimal amount of light and heat. There seems to be minimal requirement for live to exist in the universe. I don’t know if this has been studied in any details or if there have been any study into this matter in recent years. There is a lower limit on were life can exist and there is a upper limit on this same scale.
The lower limit and the upper limit
In my personal view this star classes can support life. There are limits within those classification.
Lower limit
Class M (?)
Class K
Class G
Class F
Class A
Class M (red giants, supergiants)
Lower limit
The lower limit of stars might support life if the conditions allow for it. This might not happen in majority of any star system that falls into the lower limit. If life exists around such planet in a star system that falls into the lower limit that life might only be plants that can deal with cold temperatures and long winters. Animal life on such planet should be expected to be limited to not existing at all. This goes both for ocean and land animal life.
Upper limit
All of this classes might have their own limit and not all star systems that have planets support life due to random reasons. No dwarf stars (class L, Y, T, M). Any star that is at the end of its life span might have had life in the past, it however should be expected to be extinct at this point in the star life cycle. The upper class of stars is more complicated as they radiate more energy out and have a shorter life span than smaller stars. A life can evolve around such star but in the time needed for it to evolve to a civilization levels are limited because of the time needed until that happen.
There’s no guarantee for life in a star system
While a star might be favourable to life that alone is not a guarantee in any way that a star system is going to have any life. A lot of things can go wrong in a planet formation that results in no life or atmosphere that can support life. I don’t know what starts life in a star system but it is a sequence of events that has to happen each time life gets going on a planet in any star system that has life.
The complex life problem
While life might exist in a star system it does not have to be animal life. There might be planets out there with nothing but plants and insects on them and no animals. What path evolution takes on each planet is based on random factors that are impossible to predict.
The Venus problem
Venus is a dead planet in more than just one way. When it formed something did go horribly wrong during its formation or soon after it formed. This seems to have happened early on and there is a good chance that life never took hold on Venus and it never had any water to start the carbon cycle. According to this article and based on measurements Venus magnetic field flares up for a short period of time, this suggests that whatever happened to Venus is related to the planet core and issues that it is having. In our solar system Venus should be full of jungle life today and possibly hosting a civilisation on its own. Something like humans or perhaps not. Whatever happened resulted in Venus resulted in Venus being a dead planet and he has remained like this for billions of years.
The Mars problem
Mars never had any life. Its too small as a planet to support life and due to a large eruption in its past its core died and along with it everything that might have been on its surface. There is a chance that before the core of Mars core died due to the eruption of Olympus Mons and other volcano activity. Other reasons for Mars core dying are also possible, among them greater heat loss due to Mars being a smaller planet. Being a greater distance from the Sun in our solar system Mars never had any chance of supporting life. In other solar systems where the planetary evolution is different and Mars sized planet might be closer to its star there is a small chance a life might exists for as long the planet is able to maintain its magnetic sphere.
The planet problem
There are many factors that have to add up for a life to happen in a solar system. Sometimes those factors exist in a solar system and sometimes they are missing in the formation process. How and why are not known to anyone and it is the biggest question that humans have unanswered. An answer might appear in the centuries ahead if humans survive current global warming crises.
The human race is among the first intelligent species in the universe. We are not the first, since there are stars that are older then our sun and some of those have or had a high chance of evolving intelligent life. If that species is a life today is a different matter. Intelligent species on Earth might even have happened before in Earth history since it only seems to take a species to evolve intelligent over a time period of only 2,1 to 3 million years from start to finish. It only took the evolution of the human race 2,1 million year to happen from when it started and until it current stage.
Given the age of the universe and based on the assumption that population III stars did not have any matters in them to support life as we know it (carbon based), it is clear that life might only be possible in population II stars and then only in rare cases. Current population I stars (like our sun) have the best chance of evolving life due to carbon that exists in our solar system, since carbon might be necessary for life to happen. Other types of life might happen in the right conditions but it can also be assumed that those instances are much rarer than carbon based life forms, since life based on carbon can start to evolve from the basic component soon as water and the right temperature appear on a planet surface.
Time is also a big factor here. Current estimated age of the universe is 13.8 billion years. When our solar system formed the age of the universe was only 9,3 billion years. Only star systems that are older than our solar system by 4,0 billion years can be considered to have evolved intelligent life at that time. I don’t know why that is, but that might be the time frame it takes for an intelligent life to appear first time around on a plant. After that it might re-evolve several time if the first attempts dies out for any reason. Current evident don’t suggest that has happened on Earth, at least there are no traces in the fossil record that suggest it happening on Earth until primate appeared on Earth.
What I don’t know is the number of stars in the galaxy that are older than our sun. There are few, but I don’t remember how many they are and how far they are. But given the current time frame as I see it is clear that many of those stars have already entered or have finished their red giant phases. All life in those star systems that supported life are long gone and dead. If the intelligent life in those star system did move from their native solar system before they did go nova is something I can’t possibly know.
There is a good reason why SETI won’t find aliens. They might not be out there or at best they are in earlier development stage of their civilization and their radio signal just haven’t reached us yet. As for earlier civilization there is a reason to assume that they came and went with their own solar systems (died out when their star turned into a red dwarf) or moved to a area of space that the human race is unable to detect radio waves from. Whatever the reason I don’t expect to detect any good signals from space able aliens any time soon.
Accident have happened but have been ignored with the Ross 128 signal and Wow! signal. While the Wow! signal was not ignored as such it remaines unexplained. As for the signal from Ross 128 I suspect that was a radar signal from unknown alien race that is able to travel between star systems. If they are humanoid is impossible to know, but it took the signal 10,89 years to reach Earth and it was ignored as local interference while it is clear that it never was a local interference. Only due to the reason that nothing in orbit uses the frequency range where the signal was detected on (4500Mhz – 4900Mhz). By ITU Region 2 requirements this frequency range is allocated to sight to sight communication on ground on U.S territory. It is allocated to U.S military usage according to documents that I found (the limited range is 4400 – 4500Mhz, but anything from 4400Mhz and up to 4940Mhz is allocated to the U.S government use on land and note satellite communication).
The Wow! signal might be a second species on a technical level close to our own (+70 – 100 years ahead of the human race). Not yet space ready, but at the technical level that they are able to beam out narrow signals in accordance with the idea that aliens use the 1420Mhz to communicate in space (as humans have been doing for several years now [information here]). The Ross 128 signal is from a thrid species that is at least 300+ years ahead the human race in terms of technological process.
Regardless if the actual facts of this. It is quite possible and more probable that the human race is among the first species to reach technical and intelligent level in our parts of the universe. We are probably not the first species to reach this milestone as suggested by possible evidence (Wow! signal and Ross 128 signal). If the human race ever makes a contact is a different question in it self. As it is clear that the human race first needs to avoid going extinct by its own actions and that might be harder to do in current world climate of politics, greed and power struggle. A lot needs to change in coming decades for that to happen. Global warming also needs to be stopped for the human race own survival reasons (and the biosphere as a whole in the larger view).
I am not the first person to have this idea. See NPR article.
Are We The Earliest Intelligent Life In The Universe? (npr.org)
Article updated at 00:14 CET on 25.02.2018. Minor spelling error fixes.
I see in the news that scientists have now claimed that TRAPPIST-1 has possibly chance of two Earth like planets. This is wrong in my view and the reason for that is this.
Not every star system in the universe has the ability to get life going and Trappist-1 is one of those star systems. The same goes for every other dwarf star system out there. They are all too cold to support life. If scientists want to search for life they need to focus on stars that are like or close to our own sun in make and energy output. I don’t know if O-type and down to A-type of stars can support life due to their size, radiation profile and amount of energy that they push out every second. In my view life is limited to K-type and up to F-type of stars. The Sun (Sol) is a G-type star.
The discussion about life in space has been bothering me for a long time because it is based on the assumption that life can exist everywhere without any limits. That is a wrong view to have in my view. The rule that I have in this is that there are more dead planets (without life) out there than there are planets with life.
Reading the study shows that it is based on a guesswork or highly limited data that is giving them false results in their models. The problem that I am facing is that I don’t have the hardware (or the time) to study this my self to disprove them. If I did, then I would disprove them soon as I could. But I can’t and that’s the end of that.
The news article that sparked me writing this article.
Two planets in unusual star system are very likely habitable, scientists say (The Guardian)
The star called Tabby’s Star / Boyajian’s Star but has the science name of KIC 8462852 dimmed few days ago, it’s increasing its brightness again as I write down this words. While it is not known what is creating this dimming. It is my view that following ideas are not possible, because they are just in the realm of fiction and are going to stay there.
Impossible
What might be possible
* I think this is mostly my idea that I was discussing on Ars Technica forum. It didn’t go well into the people there that didn’t understand the concept of what I was talking about. If this is the case, a helium flare might appear soon as the hydrogen is drained from the star (it might not happen due to this type of star). To my knowledge that has not yet happened. Making this idea improbable, but not impossible at the moment. Time is soon going to tell if this is the case, as older data suggests that current behaviour has been going for at least 100 years, possibly longer.
Like the rest of the science community I don’t have any idea about what is going on at KIC 8462852. Only research and observation is going to make that clear. Based on earlier pattern, a short dip that happened few days ago is soon followed by a longer dip in brightness. I’ll try to monitor the news reports once that happens to see if I can get any new data about what is going on at this star.
The light year distance to KIC 8462852 is around 1300 years, so current sequence of events took place around the year 717 on Earth.
The current thinking, mostly due to budget limitation is to only send space probes to certain targets. Like Jupiter, Venus, Mars and so on. The main reason for this is limited budget and the thinking to only explore what we currently see. That needs to change. In my view it needs to change because while we are just targeting special object in space we might be missing objects that are just outside our view.
What the human race needs to send out in space are general purpose space probes that are able to due the most basic of studies and measurements and that are able to take the necessary images if something of interest is found. What also needs to be done is to figure out a way to make space probes faster and to allow them to go longer on less fuel. This needs to happen and the science of exploring space has to change and move forward from its current status. The human race needs to start exploring space for real and reach to objects that are outside our own solar system so that we know what is there before we send humans out to explore deep space.
Yesterday (24-August-2016) there has been a lot of news about the newly discovered planet. I don’t have all the information yet, so I’m going to keep this article short.
Far as I can gather, this newly discovered planet is earth size and up to 1,3 earth size in orbit around Alpha Century Proxmia. This planet is tidal locked and it is my view that rules out life on the planet as one side of the planet gets always warmed up. This planet is also in a orbit around red dwarf, that means (as I see it) that the energy the planet gets on the surface is too little energy overall to keep water floating, or as water vapour. Radiation might also be a problem, given that Jupiter in our own solar system emits deadly ration and some of its moons cross that radiation barrier. That might also be the case in Alpha Century Proxima b. Destroying the possibly of life, even if it did not exist on the surface. This does not rule out atmosphere on the planet, what type of atmosphere it might hold is impossible to know.
There is a lot of question unanswered about the Alpha Century systems, both Alpha Century Ab and Proxima. There is a good chance there are more planets around Proxmia, even if they have not yet been discovered (due to distance from the central star). There might also be planets orbiting Ab stars in the Alpha Century system, even if they have not been discovered so far. I hope that new planets get discovered around Alpha Century star system once the James Webb Space telescope (Wikipedia) gets on-line in 2019, after being lunched in October 2018.
This blog is only updated once in a while. I can’t do research into space yet, so I don’t have a lot to write about here. There are few exceptions to that and this is one of them. What this article is about is speculation and at the moment is not a fact. What I write here are my own ideas, not yet proven as scientific fact. If they do become fact in it’s own time I do not know. It is also important to note that information here might be wrong, research data might be faulty [I don’t do the research into this signals] or the study in question might be wrong. This however does not change my view on wormholes and space travel in general, even if aspects and technical details might change with progress and more research and data.
There have been several news reports about “Fast radio burst” in recent years. At the moment this radio signals are a mystery to science. Since it does not fit into the groups of known stellar phenomenon. For me the story is different. I know what this is, and what has been discovered are wormholes (also known as Einstein-Rosen bridge) [link 2] being created. The event horizon of the newly formed wormholes gives a burst of radio wave around the hydrogen line (1420Mhz). I am not sure why that happens, one idea that I have is creation of wormhole somehow creates hydrogen in the process. Creating a wormhole requires a technical level that nothing on Earth currently is able to do and at current process is good 20 – 60 years away just for the basic work to be done in this field of wormhole technology (it doesn’t exist yet far as I know). It is my view that any civilization able to create wormholes is able to travel long distances in space.
For the wormhole creating it self, the rule that I have in my maths is simple. More the distance requires more energy, for every 10 light years travelled the energy requirement is doubled and for every 100 light years travelled the energy requirement are around ten folded. For event horizon of a wormhole to give out as much energy as the sun in a month the beings that are travelling that distance must be coming from up to 2300 light years away, the distance might even be slightly longer then that. As for detecting wormholes in nearby neighbourhood to our solar system that should not be difficult, as mentioned earlier, the longer the travel with the wormhole more energy is needed. This also works the other way, the shorter the distance less energy is required. If any wormhole travel is taking place close to our star system is not something that I would know. Last known signal that is even remotely close to our star system is the famous Wow! signal. I don’t know what the distance of the Wow! signal is in light years.
The reason for wormholes is simple. To travel long distances in space the limits of light speed and dangers need to be removed. That can only be done with wormholes, travelling with subspace is not something that works (unlike what Stargate SG-1 tells you, it is just nice science fiction) in reality. At least I have looked into that and the maths is all showing sudden death and destruction once unstable subspace is entered.
As for monitoring our nearby space for any new wormholes it is my view that should be done and in part that is already being done with the research into Fast radio bursts that are now being detected. Such monitoring should alert the human race if any space ship of technical advance race travels close to our solar system. It is clear in my mind that no alien would come to Earth. Since Earth is primitive compared to any alien race that is able to travel outside its home world and go more then 1 light year away from it.
Study into this radio signals. I don’t know if it has been peer-reviewed yet (it might not yet been peer-reviewed).
Discrete steps in dispersion measures of Fast Radio Bursts (pdf document)
News items
Is this ET? Mystery of strange radio bursts from space (newscientist.com)
Extragalactic radio burst puzzles astronomers (2007, newscientist.com)
Mathematical Pattern Found in Enigmatic Radio Bursts, But It’s Not E.T. (phenomena.nationalgeographic.com)
There is a lot of websites about space on the internet. What I find missing from this are websites that speak about what might be out there, possibilities and theories. That is the reason why I have not written on anything on this website for past eight months. I’ve been thinking what I should do about this website. I have finally made up my mind.
I am going to write about theoretical ideas about space. What might be out there and what things might be. Since this is theoretical website about space I am going to be less limited what we already know about space and what it contains. It is going to take a while until I get my first subject ready, I am working on it currently and I don’t know yet when it is going to be ready for publishing.
This website is not dead, it however has been hibernating for past eight months as do many other websites that I run today.
There has been a interesting news today from BBC News about the current quiet that is taking place in our Sun. It is already known that our Sun is a variable star, but what type of variable star our Sun is has not yet been established. The most common idea [Solar Dynamics Observatory: The ‘Variable Sun’ Mission] is that our Sun has a variability that is connected to the 11 hour sunspot cycle. I don’t think it has been considered that our Sun might be a variable star that has a cycle of 400 years, with high and lows in taking place during that period. With the last lowest point taking place during the Maunder Minimum and possibly some 400 years before that (I don’t have that confirmed, it is just an idea). It is also possible that this cycle in the Sun is more variable than that and happens at random times, but I don’t have much faith in such this. At least until proven otherwise.
If this is a cycle of high and lows that last 400 years (this has not yet been proven by scientists, so this is just a speculation on my part) cycles it means that we are currently about to enter a new low that is going to last around 70 years, we are currently just seeing the start of this minimal period in the Sun. As was the case last time this type of low did happen in the Sun it took few decades to properly start. While this remains unconfirmed it remains just an idea that I am having. What we do know however is that our Sun is getting less active in terms of sunspot activity over the past few years. I do think this trend is going to continue for the next 70 or so years. I might be wrong about this, but I based my view on best earlier data that I have available to me. For the next few decades the winters in both Europe and the U.S are going to get really cold and long. Based on earlier historical data about what happens to the weather once there are few to no sunspots at all on the Sun.
BBC News coverage of the missing sunspots.
Is our Sun falling silent? (BBC News)