The Top 5 Potentially Habitable Alien Planets

Originally posted by Arkady

Originally posted by PhoenixOD

I seriously doubt we will ever be united as a full space faring species. Maybe in the future super rich people will have somewhere to go once the earth is a total mess. The rest of humanity will be stuck here forever.

Nah, who'll flip the bigmacs and scrub the toilets on earth 2.0? there's still hope!

Im thinking robots..they work for less and dont spit in your burger.

According to Nazi folklore and such the Aldebaran star system has several planetary bodies at a mere 4 light years away. Whether that is true or not I do so wonder why we are not looking closer to home.Starting with the nearest stars first perhaps?

How the hell do they know if these planets are possibly habitable or not? This stinks to me. If our technology is at the level were told it is, i dont get how they can say "ah, it might be habitable!". Even if you know the precise orbits of them, which i dont see happening without waaay too much error......you know, our moons in the habitable zone too. These could be worlds like ours, or, basically big rocks like our moon but bigger. So wtf? And the artist interpretations are cool, but...essentially useless. pure speculation.

And the idea of higher top se ret technology being used to see these is far fetched too, but it does come to mind in the "disclosure is imminent!" Way to me...but doubtful...

I feel like someones trying to get money for arecibo by essentially lying to us.

The only way we will get of this planet, is to work as a
race together, and not as countries. It annoys the hell
out of me how backward we are!

Imagine all the money in the world we spend on killing
eachother, being spent on space travel technologies. Where
would we be now, or where will we be in say 30 years time if
all that money was spent in space exploration technologies?

Guess i was born too early with the kind of mind and thinking
i have. I dont think in my life time you will see us working together,
as a race

Originally posted by ollncasino

Space.com


Gliese 581g, located only 20 light years away from earth

Its mad to think that if Gliese 581g were to explode right at this very moment - it would`nt be detected/visible until the year 2032.
We spent long enough staring at the moon ....... but we eventually got there - who knows where we will venture in the future. Exciting times for curious minds !

Originally posted by Jay-morris
The only way we will get of this planet, is to work as a
race together, and not as countries. It annoys the hell
out of me how backward we are!

Imagine all the money in the world we spend on killing
eachother, being spent on space travel technologies. Where
would we be now, or where will we be in say 30 years time if
all that money was spent in space exploration technologies?

Guess i was born too early with the kind of mind and thinking
i have. I dont think in my life time you will see us working together,
as a race

I think were here to show us why this system is backwards

As an avid amateur interested in exoplanetary studies, I can't believe that this hasn't been brought up on this thread:

The first couple of planets (Gliese 521 c/d) are orbiting red dwarfs at a much closer distance than our Earth to Sol - they are TIDALLY LOCKED and as such, don't have a magnetic field capable of diverting harmful solar rays.

One side of the planet is perpetually baked. The other side, perpetually dark. Much like our own Moon.

Not to say that 'atmospheric' factors could help even out the planet, but you know.... no rotation... no mag-field.... NO CHANCE.

we at the beging people if we could come toghther and stop squabbling over religion and politics and start researching new types and old types of drive technology and space craft design we could be embarking on exploratory missions to these worlds within 20 years all we have to do is show companies that the money is out there and they will fund getting out there lets just hope we dont find a deadly enemy or virus out there.

Wouldn't the larger size of these planets make the gravity denser, meaning heavier? I would assume that not all of them would be oxygen rich necassarily. They could have an atmosphere but still be methane or anything. I don't know but it is interesting nonetheless.

reply to post by phroziac


You're absolutely correct in saying that there is a lot of speculation. Of course, most science starts with speculation, and with funding and the desire to advance scientific knowledge it goes on from there.

Astronomers can get a pretty good guess at the orbit of the planets, with little error by looking at a few factors. Using Kepler's Third Law of Planetary Motion the orbital size can be calculated from the orbital period, or how long it takes the planet to make one revolution around its star. The size of the planet can then be found by analyzing the size of the star and how much the brightness of the star drops as the planet transits, or passes in front of, the star. From the orbital size of the planet and the temperature of the star the planet's average temperature can be calculated.

There's no top secret technology involved, just incredibly great telescopes, radio observatories and physics being put to good use.

Just to add, here's something interesting to fuel the imagination on when E.T. is officially discovered

www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by cmdrkeenkid


Long time no see

Indeed, using the top of the range of everything we know and have, we can have a relatively precise idea of those planets' orbits, sizes, compositions and even atmospheres. How could we decide about a potential greenhouse effect if we didn't know (at least a bit) about the atmosphere?

Now, technology-wise, I'm very keen to believe that we're really close to huge leaps forward in space travel. Why, I don't know, it's like I'm feeling it. It could be in only 20 years that we're able to go warp 9! And this being said, if 20ly is "easily reached" then it is reasonable to assume that 600ly is "just about easily" reached as well.

One has to realize that 20ly is a very short distance in the galaxy...

Who knows, I may retire on another planet?

Originally posted by winofiend

Originally posted by TheLonewolf
reply to post by Miccey

 

Really blows ones' mind when you sit back and contemplate it doesn't it? It's mathematically IMPOSSIBLE that we are alone. Hundreds of trillions of billions of galaxies, stars, planets, and moons out there. When you start to realize that, it makes you kind of feel not so special anymore.

edit on 30-9-2012 by TheLonewolf because: forgot a word

That is exactly what I've been saying. We're a spec in the background of the cosmos. But we're so arrogant as a species that we make up a story about a super duper sky ghost that made us especially for him, and then he made everything just as it is today and all in 7 days, by which time he said "Crikey I'm buggered" and had a little lie down.

To these folk it is inconceivable that we're just not that special in the grand scheme of things.

I hear ya on the magical sky wizard stuff..I've never understood how people can believe in that non-sense, and I never will. The arrogance if mankind to think all of this was built for him is beyond laughable, It's absurd..I know the "believers" will counter with "theoretical physics and sciences are just made up too", but what they fail to realize is that for something to be theoretical in science or physics there has to be plausible, and/or tangible proof of their theories. They don't just make s**t up and say "yep, that's the way it is" like the church does.

And dont forget, even with colonising Mars we have to consider that we, as human individuals, are also biological entities, that are "Home and Host" to many, many other Earth creatures, that may or may not be able to survive outside of our planet...
Consider our stomach digestive system, home to Billions of Good (and bad) bacteria that aids us, after millions of years of symbiosis, to digest food and make it suitable for body absorption.
The many thousands of microbes that live in and under our skins. etc etc.
Each one of us is like a whole planet to them, they seem to need us, what if they suddenly all die and fall off...would man eg Mammal eg Living creatures, survive without being host to these critters...and Yes they have just as much right to life as us.....after all, we are just a collection of living cells, living in harmony (mostly).

So we have to consider our other Earth life, do we not?
If we terraform Mars, we have to take all the Flora/Fauna/Microbes etc to make a proper eco system or it may not work......also, we still dont know what may be there...Particularly on these fantasy planets....what microbes may have a war with our microbes...etc etc.

Lots to think about.....then again if life is Universal, perhaps there is a blueprint of continuity...as in sameness.
would make sense...

Originally posted by Miccey
Dont you have "Faith"..Dudes...
Dont be sad, weve probly been
there and back. Atleast according
to other posters on ATS...

oh sorry, to much sarcasm...

But i hear you, its abit frustrating,
and teasing. Could it be, nahh, do
you think they could be lying to us.
That there ARE no planets...Like,
"Oh, we have to give them something".......

I have kind of a weird theory on the "no planets" thing..Since the universe is constantly expanding. What if by the time we get out there everything is so far away that we can never reach it. We'll be stuck in our own little "bubble of space" in the universe..We'll just have our solar system and surrounding empty space to explore. Probably doesn't make sense, but alot of the stuff i read on ATS doesn't either

I hope the cold and flu cant survive in mars lol.

Another thing im thinking...they might as well count gas giants too. They arent habitable but they coulld have habitable moons....

reply to post by TheLonewolf


Actually the Sumerian/Babylonian texts the Enuma Elish addressed our planets original orbits, and the crash that hit Tiamat (probably Earth) which created its own moon from the rubble. It also addressed the later event the so called Garden of Eden in which humans were created. [The taking of Adam's rib to make Eve resembles what we know today about cloning. From what I understand the viscera, especially the stomach have perhaps the best tissue to be used for cloning. That is in the region of one of the lower ribs.]

If you wish to poopoo the above, then please explain how they knew of our 'current' solar system, including Pluto and other small proto planets we still know little about. They would have at least had truly exceptional telescopes to study aberrations in planetary travel. They existed about 4000-1750 BC. "The earliest known working telescopes appeared in 1608." Wikipedia

You might also wish to read some of the "celestial battle" writings of Zecharia Sitchin.

There is much about early civilizations that we cannot explain, and that still stump archaeologists, physicists, and other scientists, yet the presence of amazing structures defy our current abilities to create such structures.
Explain the block walls of the city of Cuzco in which some of the blocks weighed 300 tons and they were carved to interlock, something which needed machinery we still have not invented. Other civilizations created similar walls.

reply to post by TheLonewolf

You may find that they already have, I did read that James Cameron the billionaire wanted to fund ships for terraforming so when I saw the article ufo hides in rings on saturn I kind of joined the dots and thought that's no ufo that's man made apparently we've been zipping backwards and forwards to different planets for years so say the whistle blowers but the media is not allowed to tell us as per usual treat us like mushrooms kept in the dark and feed us full of *hit, so what exactly are they doing mining the minerals in Saturns rings or are they terraforming, well I suppose we just won't find out this is just for those evil ones at the top enlightening themselves again with all that knowledge, apparently it only takes 90 minutes to get to the moon too nowadays, or does everything stand still since the 60's like some people think, I personally think not! Just my 2 cents worth or pennies where i come from (chuckle) come on human race we are not alone we have the technology they gave it to us and are still feeding it to us from area 51.

reply to post by SpookyVince


It has been awhile. I come and I go, depending on how much free time I have. Currently, it's a lot.

The easiest way for scientists to break down the components of a distant planet's atmosphere is through the use of spectroscopy. For example, visible light is sent through a prism, which breaks the light down to its according wavelengths. White light gives you all the colors of the rainbow. Now let's take the white light source and place some hydrogen-alpha gas between it and the prism. What happens is the h-alpha will absorb some of the light, leaving a gap in the red part light as it leaves the prism. This is called an absorption line, and were first described in detail in the early 1800s (though Newton may have seen them first).

The planet in question will not be emitting its own light, but it will reflect light from its parent star. As it reflects the light, its own gasses will absorb some of the spectrum, creating new absorption bands to be seen. This is compared to the spectrum from from the parent star and scientists are able to tell what sort of gasses can be found in the planet's atmosphere. This is how it can be deduced that there may be a greenhouse effect occurring on the planet.

It would be nice to think that we're on the verge of some breakthrough in interstellar travel. There are few things I could think of that I would want to see more in my lifetime. But, who knows? With some of the more recent refinements to the Alcubierre Drive we're definitely heading in the right direction.

Originally posted by phroziac
How the hell do they know if these planets are possibly habitable or not? This stinks to me. If our technology is at the level were told it is, i dont get how they can say "ah, it might be habitable!". Even if you know the precise orbits of them, which i dont see happening without waaay too much error......you know, our moons in the habitable zone too. These could be worlds like ours, or, basically big rocks like our moon but bigger.

They never said they know for sure, but it SEEMS these could be in the habitable zone of a star, base on the energy output of the star, and based on the planet's distance to that star. They can tell if it is rocky or a ball of gas based on the size relative to its mass, and the mass can be estimated by how much it makes its star wobble.

Put that all together, and you can tell of a planet is rocky or not, and how much heat it may receive from its star. Of course, their are variables, such as greenhouse effect or lack of a thick atmosphere. Venus is in the "habitable zone", but has a runaway greenhouse effect. Mars is in the habitable zone, but has virtually no magnetic filed to help keep its atmosphere in place.

So these planets are POTENTIALLY habitable, but they can't be sure.

As for moons being in a habitable zone, Scientists have already said that they believe it could be possible for some gas giants in habitable zones to have moons that are habitable, but there is no way (yet) to detect the moons of extrasolar planets.



EDIT TO ADD:
...And to "cmdrkeenkid": Welcome back. It's been a while.