The search for extraterrestrial life may not take us far from home. Astronomers at the University of Copenhagen recently published an incredible study that shows that there is a high probability that the Milky Way is absolute flooded with potentially vital planets.
The team’s paper, published in Science Advances, titled “A Pebble Formation Model for the Formation of Terrestrial Planets in the Solar System,” describes and attempts to confirm a theory that planets are made up of tiny, millimeter-sized pebbles that move apart over the course of the year Ball up time.
According to the researchers:
We show that a pebble accretion scenario for the formation of terrestrial planets provides explanations for various properties of the terrestrial planets in the solar system, including the masses and orbits of Venus, Earth and Mars, the isotopic composition of Earth and Mars, and the delivery of carbon and water to Earth in Quantities comparable to the inferred reservoirs.
The big idea here is that ice pebbles are present in the earliest planetary formations. Scientists believe that Earth, Mars and Venus were formed in this way and assume that we will find the same scenario in most of the other exoplanets. And that is, where it was previously believed that only the earth or some earth-like worlds could have water, it is now possible that most Planetary bodies have some form of water on them.
According to a press release from the university, lead researcher Anders Johansen can say that carbon-based life is much more common than previously thought:
All planets in the Milky Way can consist of the same building blocks, which means that planets with the same amount of water and carbon as Earth – and thus potential places for life to exist – often occur around other stars in our galaxy, provided , the temperature is right.
The next generation of telescopes should expand our field of view beyond our own solar system and give us some real-world data on the chemical and topographical makeup of exoplanets orbiting other stars. And thanks to a multitude of machine learning and artificial intelligence breakthroughs, the search for habitable worlds with the building block of life has entered an exciting new era.
Take quickly: This is an exciting time to be an ET lover! This is one of the biggest concrete indicators that there could be more Earth-like planets.
Where we had long hoped to find only one sign other than some dusty, cold rock out there that once housed some simple, space-suitable, single-celled organisms, now serious scientists have the license to suspect fantastic planets full of marine life and ice, or even living beings Surface seas separated by lively continents. And all right next door.
It looks less and less as if we were alone in the universe and more and more as if we could discover some form of life on other planets within decades.
Read the whole paper here.
Published on February 23, 2021 – 19:48 UTC
Comments are closed.