Neptune's lifetime.

With 9000 earth days to a Neptunian year, i'd say that should Neptune support life, its life would live for many hundreds of earth years.

Agree/Disagree?


[edit on 3/6/10 by spearhead]

i honestly have no idea, that's 9000 earth days, but you can't really say, some animals here live for only 24 hours, and some live for up to 150 years.

MMmmmm, i would have to disagree..

If Neptune did host life, I would imagine that the living entities would be held to the same growth time frames as we are.

Take a simple living form on earth, the life cycle would be the same no matter where on earth it might be found, no matter if it is situated near to the equator or poles. In so saying and IMO the same could be said for Neptune.

If One year on Neptune is 9000 earth years Id say the life span would be less than 1/10 of a year.

I agree and disagree, it really depends on the organism itself, here on earth are organisms that can live for millions of years, others for thousands, and hundreds of years. I guess it's a question of adaptation, and has less to do with how many days a year has on any given planet.


[edit on 3-6-2010 by Clairaudience]

Well, briefly consider the following three facts.

Neptune's orbit is so far from the sun it only receives a very small amount of heat (-218 °C, 55 K)

There is no solid surface due to the fact that Neptune is a gas giant.

Neptune's atmosphere has the highest wind speeds in the solar system, up to 2000 km/h

So, let's assume for a moment that Neptune can indeed harbour life, it is going to be so far removed from anything encountered by human beings that to begin speculating the life expectancy of such hypothetical beings seems a little redundant.

If your question was "Would a life supporting planet with a solar year of 9000 days harbour life that lives much longer than here on earth?" my answer would be...

Hell, I don't know

Remain Vigilant

reply to post by bonsaisert


Being a gas giant it actually contains liquid in a sense. Under the emense pressure the gases of Neptune become liquid. With these enormous pressures also comes heat.
Beneath Neptune's outer layers of gases the temperature is believed to quite high compensating for the lack of solar radiation.

So i'll get a little more specific...

Would an "equievelant being" harbour an extented lifetime.

Originally posted by spearhead
With 9000 earth days to a Neptunian year, i'd say that should Neptune support life, its life would live for many hundreds of earth years.

Agree/Disagree?

Let's say you move to Neptune and bring a habitat with you with air, heat and water so you can survive.

How long will you live on Neptune, in

Earth Years?
Neptune Years?

[edit on 3-6-2010 by Arbitrageur]

reply to post by spearhead


Is life on earth and it's lifespan in anyway tied to our planets orbit around the sun, aside from the Human measurement of it?

No, you live as long as you live and it has nothing to do with the planets orbit, it's genetics and environment that determine your lifespan.

So I doubt Neptunes orbit would have any bearing on the lifespan of any creatures there either.

reply to post by spearhead


well, yeah!

i never really thought about it until now but what you say makes sense to me!

whatever lives on Neptune, is made of the same things that Neptune is.
just like here on Earth we live as carbon based life forms in an organic system, so it is for every other celestial body.

we are linked to our planets, physically, in ways we have not yet considered, i think. it is the fundamental principle of biology and maybe chemistry, too.

[edit on 6/3/2010 by queenannie38]

No, you wouldn't live longer. Like many have noted already, it has to do with species attributes and configurations. The amount of time it takes for an object to orbit the Sun has no effect on the passage of time. The orbit of 9000 days tells us that the progression of the planet through orbit is longer than ours.

Meaning that if you were there and 365 days passed, your planet will not have moved much in comparison to our planet; which would've already made a lap around the Sun.


Age comes into question when you begin to explore general relativity and special relativity. However, objects do not age slower, it is merely the perception of them that changes.

-----

If a person traveled at lightspeed in one direction, away from Earth, for about ... 5 minutes of their time. (As in, the time spent in lightspeed is being measured by the person traveling at lightspeed.)

Here, on Earth, a rather massive amount of time(by comparison to 5 minutes) would have passed. Assuming they turn around and head back to the starting point. They might find themselves looking at a completely different world.

You do this enough and, by perception of those witnessing your great departure, upon your return you would "basically" be marginally older than everyone else. You could take a trip and come back to an Earth 5000 years older.

To those people, assuming there are any left, you would "basically" be 5000+ years old, since you were born in an earlier time and happen to still be in existence.


But this is all relative to the tools of measurement. Literally speaking, you really aren't 5000 years old. You would have the same life expectancy as any other human, unless space doused you with some weird aging effects or something.



However much time you spend in lightspeed is basically the amount of time you add to the age you've spent on earth. If you spent 30 days at lightspeed and come back to an Earth 400 years later, you are not actually 400+ years old, you are only 30 days older.

-----

(Don't take the numbers I've dished out literally, they're merely there as an example. I'm not gonna sit here and calculate actual numbers.)


Therefore, your lifespan would have more to do with the configuration of your species and average lifespan than the amount of time it takes for the planet you inhabit to get around the Sun.

[edit on 3-6-2010 by SentientBeyondDesign]

reply to post by spearhead


You seem to be confusing astronomical time with actual biological time. Our lifespans have nothing to do with the revolution of the Earth around the sun.

We just happen to measure time based on that revolution.

If we existed further out from the sun so that a revolution took twice as long, it would neither extend nor shorten our truth lifespan. We would simply use a different astronomical frame of reference to mark the passing of that time frame. So while we would live for the same amount of time, our system of demarking that time would be different. Rather than an average of around 70 "years" we would have an average of 35 "years".

It does not mean we would be dying younger, just using different terminology.

reply to post by SentientBeyondDesign

Here's a site where you can calculate your age in Neptune years, or any other planet's years.
www.exploratorium.edu...

And that site implies I can almost cut my age in half by going to Mars...you're saying that's not true? bummer

reply to post by Arbitrageur


That calculator works off the basis of measuring your age in Neptune standards. But like what was noted earlier is that your age doesn't change ... merely the terminology is changed.

Even the age you go by now is merely an artificial construct.

-----

For the sake of being quirky, your technical age, if you wanna go by really severe technicalities ... would have to be around as old as the universe itself. Since you're made of stuff that was here since the beginning.

You're basically a machine made from a ton of really ancient parts.

So, you're REALLY billions and billions of years old. If you're counting the age of your parts.

[edit on 3-6-2010 by SentientBeyondDesign]

Hi.

If I understand it correct, life on Earth is very much related to Earths orbit and its spin.

We all have an internal clock inside. There are species that only spawn at a specific full moon or even only spawn one specific day every 30 years ( Not sure it was 30 could be 31 or even 11. )

Try having a jet lag...

It would occur to me that this also happens on Neptune, however a Neptune dweller could easily get a 1000 or maybe 10.000 ( Earth ) years old.

I don't think there is an age limit. Some organisms on Earth can also live for 2000 years.

Originally posted by spearhead
With 9000 earth days to a Neptunian year, i'd say that should Neptune support life, its life would live for many hundreds of earth years.

Agree/Disagree?

Disagree. As others have said our lifespans are determined by biology not astronomy. Otherwise we could go live on Mars or wherever and suddenly live twice as long, but presumably we'd then be made to work twice as long for the same salary and so on

Our use of terms like seconds, hours, days and years are really an artificial standard based on astronomic observations.

From Wiki

Early definitions of the second were based on the motion of the earth: 24 hours in a day meant that the second could be defined as 1⁄86 400 of the average time required for the earth to complete one rotation about its axis. However, nineteenth- and twentieth-century astronomical observations revealed that this average time is lengthening, and thus the motion of the earth is no longer considered a suitable standard for definition.

Nowadays science defines the second based on a more universally applicable standard, the frequency of vibration of caesium atoms. It's not a perfect solution but will have to serve until a better fixed and unchanging basis is found.

I rather liked the Fritz Leiber 'Lankhmar' stories where Death measured out our alloted lifespan in heartbeats. Once your limit was reached that was it, your number was up, literally.

Things like humming birds with a fast heartrate didn't last as long as say, an elephant. Nice idea but it doesn't account for plants, bacteria etc, though Death didn't concern himself with those.

I like to use Fritz's concept to justify slacking off and resting as much as I can.

[edit on 3/6/10 by Crazy Man Michael]