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Some Planets may be better for life than Earth


MSC

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19 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Earth seems perfectly suited to life, we live here. 😉

 

😄 Indeed. I do so love this planet. Would be better if we didn't always feel so caught between a rock (People) and a hard place (Nature)... Although... maybe there is only the hard place and I'm imagining the rock? :P

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On 10/6/2020 at 1:32 PM, MSC said:

maybe there is only the hard place and I'm imagining the rock? :P

We've got two choice's, run away or learn how to live on a rock; the hard place lives and dies with us, the rock doesn't give a shit... 🖖

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1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

We've got two choice's, run away or learn how to live on a rock; the hard place lives and dies with us, the rock doesn't give a shit... 🖖

I love how you switched the words around and it can still mean the same thing in sentiment ahhhh language ^_^ So beautiful.

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8 minutes ago, Pussstmpy said:

I really love the planet earth too but I think there will come a time that this planet will become inhabitable because of the global warming.

I know, I am holding a lot of faith in science to be able to combat that... If people can start to behave and work together and if we can also combat deep political polarisation.

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1 hour ago, MSC said:

there will come a time that this planet will become inhabitable because of the global warming

It IS currently inhabitable and will remain so for some time, as it means 'suitable to live in'.
You probably meant uninhabitable ( unsuitable to live in ).
I think most understood what you meant, but I'm feeling nit-picky today.

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47 minutes ago, MigL said:

It IS currently inhabitable and will remain so for some time, as it means 'suitable to live in'.
You probably meant uninhabitable ( unsuitable to live in ).
I think most understood what you meant, but I'm feeling nit-picky today.

Why did I get a notification saying I said this? I'd have corrected it myself but wasn't sure if English was that persons first language and busy most of the day today.

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On 10/6/2020 at 1:11 PM, dimreepr said:

Earth seems perfectly suited to life, we live here. 😉

Perhaps the other planets don't have Donald Trump.

Now as to the report. I found some of the assumptions rather flaky. Perhaps this is down to the inadequacies of popular rendings and would be properly addressed in the original research. With that caveat consider these issues - extracts from the article are in italics:

  • "Earth is around 4.5 billion years old, but the researchers argue that the sweet spot for life is a planet that is between 5 billion to 8 billion years old." This runs counter to the probable extinction of all life on Earth, due to increases of solar output, in from 1 to 2 billion years time, right in the middle of the researchers sweet spot.
  • "A slightly overall warmer temperature, a mean surface temperature of about 5 degrees Celsius (or about 8 degrees Fahrenheit) greater than Earth, together with the additional moisture, would be also better for life." This ignores the obvious point that temperatures vary over the lifetime of a planet, both because of gradual increases in stellar output, but also changes in atmosphere, ocean and land.
  • "A planet that is 10% larger than the Earth should have more habitable land." A significant determinant of the continental mass is likely the outcome of the posited moon-creating impact. The researchers appear to have ignored that.
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13 minutes ago, Area54 said:

Perhaps the other planets don't have Donald Trump.

You had me at "Don't have Donald Trump". When do we leave? If other planets have Humans, should we call SG-1? Michael Shanks has been struggling for roles since, so he'd probably be keen!

Thanks for highlighting some of the inconsistencies :) not my field, so I wouldn't have noticed that.

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It is all a bit too speculative or something for my liking. That some planets might be more likely than Earth for life - and for complex life - to develop seems a reasonable proposition. Knowing exactly what conditions those might be is going to be difficult, but even the assumption of milder, warmer, less extremes being "better" looks like overreaching.

I don't think we know what "better" is. Could not extreme conditions and variability be more - not less - significant to evolution?

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26 minutes ago, Ken Fabian said:

It is all a bit too speculative or something for my liking. That some planets might be more likely than Earth for life - and for complex life - to develop seems a reasonable proposition. Knowing exactly what conditions those might be is going to be difficult, but even the assumption of milder, warmer, less extremes being "better" looks like overreaching.

I don't think we know what "better" is. Could not extreme conditions and variability be more - not less - significant to evolution?

I think I see what you mean and now wonder what is meant by "better" too. Do they mean more of the resources life needs are in greater abundance there? I definitely don't agree it would be better for our kind of life. We have different degrees of survivability just based on the variance of climate and weather patterns on our own planet. 

It may be that a larger earth like planet would have zones fit for our habitation (assuming we'd have some way of bolstering our immune systems to be able to deal with an entirely different an more diverse microbiome). It could be however that this hypothetical planet has less human fit habitable zones by square meter than earth does. 

There could be super desserts, Massive polar tundras, Colossal Volcanoes, Vaster and deeper oceans, Wetter rainforests with larger trees, larger and more dangerous wildlife, the scale of it's natural disasters could be completely out of our league. 

It could be that increased variance and geo instability simply doesn't allow anything to survive long enough to become a specialised survivor through earth typical evolution.

 

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  • 3 months later...

Among the 24 candidates for a "super-habitable" planet, none of them meet all the criteria. Planets do not have to be very old to be habitable, otherwise they will exhaust geothermal heat and lose their protective geomagnetic fields. The earth is about 4.5 billion years old, but researchers argue that the optimal place for life is on a planet that is between 5 and 8 billion years old.

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