Originally posted by NeverWalkAlone
Would that change the fact that a planets temp. and therefore its environment is dictated by its distance from the Sun? Clearly very far away planets are too cold to host life and planets too close to the Sun burn up.
Right?
Not really. But consider this, from www.kronia.com...
The Red Giant Betelgeuse is so huge that if it
were to replace our Sun then Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and
Jupiter would be engulfed by it. Astronomers recognize that such
stars could swallow planets yet their plasma envelope is so
tenuous that it would not impede the planetary orbits within the
star's atmosphere. However, astronomers believe that any planet
it swallowed would be gradually vaporized by intense heat from
the star's core. But the standard stellar model has to be
seriously fudged to explain Red Giants, their central temperature
turns out to be so low that no known nuclear process can possibly
supply the observed energy output. The electric model, on the
other hand, works seamlessly from Supergiant star to a planet-
sized Brown Dwarf.
Since an electric star is heated externally a planet need not be
destroyed by orbiting beneath its anode glow. In fact life is not
only possible inside the glow of a small brown dwarf, it seems
far more likely than on a planet orbiting outside a star! This is
because the radiant energy arriving on a planet orbiting inside a
glowing sphere is evenly distributed over the entire surface of
the planet.
There are no seasons, no tropics and no ice-caps. A planet does
not have to rotate, its axis can point in any direction and its
orbit can be eccentric. The radiant energy received by the planet
will be strongest at the blue and red ends of the spectrum.
Photosynthesis relies on red light. Sky light would be a pale
purple (the classical "purple dawn of creation"). L-type Brown
Dwarfs have water as a dominant molecule in their spectra, along
with many other biologically important molecules and elements.
Its "children" would accumulate atmospheres and water would mist
down. It is therefore of particular interest that most of the
extra-solar planets discovered are gas giants, several times the
size of Jupiter, orbiting their star extremely closely. It is our
system of distantly orbiting planets that seems the odd one out.
In fact it argues in favor of a galactic traffic accident between
the Sun and a sub-Brown Dwarf like Jupiter or Saturn.
EDIT: Oh and remember, brown dwarves are the most common type of star in the universe. And if life is more likely on planets orbiting a brown dwarf...
[edit on 17-12-2007 by Riposte]
