NASA looks for other Earths... No "Moon"? No Dice!

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., March 7, 2009 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ ----NASA's Kepler mission successfully launched into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II at 10:49 p.m. EST, Friday. Kepler is designed to find the first Earth-size planets orbiting stars at distances where water could pool on the planet's surface. Liquid water is believed to be essential for the formation of life.

NASA's Kepler Mission

Nasa is launched their new telescope that will look for other Earth-type planets, being of Earth size, and being within the habitable zone, that is, a distance near/far away from it's sun, that water can exist as a liquid, hopefully laying the stage for the development of life.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/2b8403ca2d76.jpg[/atsimg]


not so fast.



there is a caveat I have not heard discussed.

As you can see by this series.. "If We Had No Moon" an Earth without a proper PERFECTLY SIZED counterbalance.. a MOON.. around which both earth and moon orbit a common "barycenter" which is a place around 1000 feet below the earth's crust. detailed here -
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/6b7f33ae1a3c.gif[/atsimg]

Our "Earth" is actually the "Earth - Moon" system.
The moon strikes a perfect balance to the Earth's natural "wobble" .. stabilizing us.. allowing us our regularly scheduled seasons, and relatively constant climates.

Without a moon, the exact size and distance as ours, the planets we'd be looking at with the new NASA telescope, we'd be looking at planets with similar unstable rotations like mars.. constantly "tumbling" through space, not standing on anarrow axis.. but wobbling back and forth up to 90 degrees off it's perpendicular axis...
...we'd indeed need to whittle down the odds EVEN MORE for intelligent life to exist (in an "Earth" type template).. down to Earth's with moons like ours..

OR an equivalent ratio of masses. ie: if our moon is 1/3 our earth's size.. then something larger would need a 1/3 size moon as well.. if it was a slightly smaller or slightly larger earth.


If this hasn't been talked about in the media, then after the NASA program begins.. and we start getting reports from image analysts..
I anticipate we'll hear a boatload about this earth-moon factor.
As it will weigh heavily in our search for an earth sized planet with a "stabilized rotation" being a requirement for the relative constant climate conditions that would allow for a planetary civilization of intelligent life, let alone, large animals.

if.. that's what we're looking for.


here are some videos illustrating the moon's importance in our rotation, and thus our climate's stabilization.

The effect the Moon has on the Earth's climate-



The Moon - Life on Earth Possible Without?



(1of5) If We Had No Moon


link to part 2 and others of "If We Had No Moon"


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Great NASA wants to look for other planets that are Earth like, BUT we cannot get a clear picture of the moon even though they helped put sattelites into orbit for google map that can check out cars on the ground and bathers by their pools. Before you quote 'distance' on me , NASA should be called Never A Straight Answer instead, when we can't get one regarding the moon , our nearest neighbour.
What chance, if they discover an Earth type planet, are we going to get that they tell us the truth about it. I woldn't trust them until they come clean about the moon and any 'artifacts' or 'anomalies' on the surface. Or at least show us unedited photographs.

I get the point that, just because the planets we are looking for dont have moons, they cannot support life, and hence the mission is a waste of money?

If that is the case, then, understand that the mission will not be able to detect how many moons a planet has, only the planet and its position in the Goldilocks zone surrounding the parent star. So, the planet might have moons if it has enough mass to create gravity to make it spherical in shape and hold a moon. You might ask, why we cannot see the moons? The reason is that our technology has not developed a lot, and we are just detecting a planet by analyzing the light of the parent star dimming as it passes in front of it. And in some cases, it may be so minute that the space craft might not even notice that in its CCD.

[edit on March 9th, 2009 by peacejet]

Originally posted by peacejet
I get the point that, just because the planets we are looking for dont have moons, they cannot support life, and hence the mission is a waste of money?

If that is the case, then, understand that the mission will not be able to detect how many moons a planet has, only the planet and its position in the Goldilocks zone surrounding the parent star. So, the planet might have moons if it has enough mass to create gravity to make it spherical in shape and hold a moon. You might ask, why we cannot see the moons? The reason is that our technology has not developed a lot, and we are just detecting a planet by analyzing the light of the parent star dimming as it passes in front of it. And in some cases, it may be so minute that the space craft might not even notice that in its CCD.

[edit on March 9th, 2009 by peacejet]

I'm not saying that it's a waste of money because the planets we see might not have moons.

I'm just putting that factor out there as it hasn't been discussed.

I'm not saying that a planet needs a moon to develop life..

but to set up the conditions to be most favorable for an intelligent species to at least have a chance at developing, I think you'd want at least a stable enough rotational axis, to have predicable weather.. "reliable" weather.. on the average.. overall..


i also think that they know exactly where to find whatever they're looking for.. as they've already through black ops found everything they want to find..
and these type of programs are merely old-technology (cutting edge to us) theatrics to "show" the general public the "history in progress" that's already been checked out and cleared for public consumption decades ago.. what we will find will be scripted etc.. not this "hey coma on everybody.. lets go look out into space together and see what we may find!"..etc..

what we eventually "find" will be what we are "supposed to find"...according to plan...by history's scriptwriters / actors.

BUT THAT'S ALL SPECULATION ON MY PART.
it's the conspiracy theorist in me talking and ..well.. this IS ATS..

don't let that last point get to be the dominating topic though please..

just giving you a lil snack to chew on if you haven't already suspected that of NASA.


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reply to post by prevenge


well it could be the opposite. Its been observed on earth that life goes through its big changes when extreme events happen. A planet without a moon may force species to adapt or change faster than has happened on earth.

intelligence may come around quicker on such a planet. I cant view the youtube videos you posted as i'm at work. I'll watch them when i go home.

Originally posted by prevenge
Without a moon, the exact size and distance as ours, the planets we'd be looking at with the new NASA telescope, we'd be looking at planets with similar unstable rotations like mars.. constantly "tumbling" through space, not standing on anarrow axis.. but wobbling back and forth up to 90 degrees off it's perpendicular axis...

Mars has an unstable rotation?
Wobbling back and forth up to 90º?

Are you sure? I do not remember any planet doing that.

Mars has 2 moons. Im not sure about proportions but they are there. Phobos and Demos if memory serves.

reply to post by zombiemann


Phobos and Deimos are very small, Phobos is 11km wide and Deimos 6km, and they are just big rock, they are not even round.

reply to post by ArMaP


A bit of an exaggeration.

The present-day obliquity is approximately 25.1 degrees. The maximum possible variation is from about 14.9 to 35.5 degrees. Signtificant climatic effects must be associated with the phenomenon.

www.sciencemag.org...

reply to post by ArMaP


Possibly greater than 35:

Indeed, recent studies suggest that occasionally -- at intervals of a few tens of millions of years -- Mars' obliquity may swing from 0 degrees all the way up to 60 degrees.

www.spacedaily.com...

It doesn't seem so cut and dried. There may be other influences than a large moon which can contribute to the stability of a planet's obliquity. I won't pretend I understand this completely but it seems to be saying that Mars' axial tilt does not fall into the range of chaotic values. Lasker's theory seems to say that without a large moon, it should be chaotic.

Tidal dissipation within Mars, as constrained by the observed evolution of the orbit of Phobos, appears sufficient to regularize the obliquity variations. If Mars has a fluid core, viscous core-mantle coupling would also tend to damp the obliquity variations.

www.lpi.usra.edu...

Kepler is not so much looking for habitable planets as it is conducting a statistical survey of (among other things):

1. The number of Earth sized and larger planets
   
2. The distance of those planets from their stars
   
3. The types of stars which have Earth sized planets
   

It seems to be a way of fine tuning the Drake equation. But I'm not so sure that large moons would be undetectable. Speculating, but perhaps the wobble in the orbit of a planet with a large moon can be detected. After all, it is the wobble of stars (caused by planets) that led to the discovery of extrasolar planets.


[edit on 3/9/2009 by Phage]

for planets without a big moon the flipping every 30 million years should be slow enough for life to adapt over that period.

[edit on 9-3-2009 by yeti101]

It would be amazing if we find another system like ours. Really doesn't matter if it has a moon or not. This other earth can have a moon without a sun, a sun without a moon, two suns, two moons. It has it's own balance. As long as there is a source giving light enabling life to flourish. It's all about being habitable, and what resources the planet contains.

[edit on 9-3-2009 by Gouki]

Originally posted by Gouki
It would be amazing if we find another system like ours. Really doesn't matter if it has a moon or not. This other earth can have a moon without a sun, a sun without a moon, two suns, two moons. It has it's own balance. As long as there is a source giving light enabling life to flourish. It's all about being habitable, and what resources the planet contains.

[edit on 9-3-2009 by Gouki]

balances deviate over time without a proper sized mass to stabilize it.

if you DID find a moonless earth.. you'd have to find it at the exact time in it's history where it was balancing with a very small wobble... before a deviation..

also.. without a moon acting as something that produces tides.. i think you'd ge a lot LESS "churning of the oceans".. and "waves" .. the kind of action that causes all these molecules to stir up and come into contact with one another more often.. causing the basic building blocks of life to emerge from the primordial soup is good food.

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And if we find life on Titan (or on any Jovian or Saturnian moon) then that would make the whole premise of this thread moot. Wouldn't it? Although that's still a big IF, but isn't it too much arrogance on our part to think that life can only exist someplace with the exact same parameters that we have here on this planet?

[edit on 3.10.09 by toreishi]

In the solar system, all the planets other than Mercury and Venus have moons. That's six out of eight; seven out of nine if you count Pluto. It appears, then that moons are fairly common. It looks as if most planets have moons (which makes sense if you think of the way most planetary systems are now thought to form). And if moons are borh relatively common and conducive to the evolution of life on their primaries, well, then, there's probably a lot of life out there.

True, Earth's moon is much larger relative to its primary than any of the other planetary satellites, but that's a different argument.

Originally posted by Astyanax


True, Earth's moon is much larger relative to its primary than any of the other planetary satellites, but that's a different argument.

no. it's actually the exact arguement I'm proposing.

watch the video I posted.. "if we had no moon" .. and you'll see that the exact size and distance that our moon is.. allows for our planet to be stable and allow life as we know it.


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