Planetary Moment

The End Of The World - When Will The Earth Be Destroyed?

2009-04-27T14:41:00.001-07:00

You wake up in the morning, take a shower, eat some breakfast, drink your cup of coffee and prepare to face the day. It's a beautiful day, the sun is shinning and the birds are chirping. You contently drive off to work completely unaware of whats going on far away, past the clouds in the sky, deep in space.

Originally, scientist thought that we had 7.5 billion years before our sun would die and engulf the Earth. Astronomers at the university of Sussex have come up with a new calculation. In 1 billion years the earth will become so hot that the oceans will boil and evaporate into space. The reason for the shortened time frame for the Earth's inevitable destruction is the original calculation did not take into effect the drag caused by the atmosphere of our dieing sun. Dr Robert Smith from the University of Sussex said: "We showed previously that, as the Sun expanded, it would lose mass in the form of a strong wind, much more powerful than the current solar wind. This would reduce the gravitational pull of the Sun on the Earth, allowing the Earth's orbit to move outwards, ahead of the expanding Sun”. Smith also said: "If that were the only effect the Earth would indeed escape final destruction. However, the tenuous outer atmosphere of the Sun extends a long way beyond its visible surface, and it turns out the Earth would actually be orbiting within these very low density outer layers. The drag caused by this low-density gas is enough to cause the Earth to drift inwards, and finally to be captured and vaporised by the Sun." This gives scientists approximately 1 billion years to come up with a solution to save our species.

What are some possible scenarios to escape or doomed fate on this planet. A team of scientist at the Santa Cruz University suggest using the gravitational pull of a large passing asteroid to gradually expand the Earth's orbit away from the sun. This plan, however, is extremely risky, a small miss calculation and the asteroid could hit the Earth, ending our existence before the sun does. Another possible solution would be to create "space life rafts" that could slowly move away from the sun, as it grows into a red giant star, but stay close enough to utilize its energy. Perhaps, we could even find a way to give our planet independent propulsion, moving the entire planet out of harms way.

Although the end of our world is millions of generations away, it is clear that it would be in our best interest, as a species, to find a way to leave the planet. So, don't worry enjoy that coffee and the warm summer breeze, you don't have to worry about any of this for another billion years... Unless of course, scientists come out with another "new calculation" proving the second one wrong, shortening the doomsday count down even more...

How Aliens Might See Our Planet Earth

2009-04-23T14:23:00.000-07:00

As science and technology become more advanced astronomers are discovering many planets orbiting stars outside our solar system. Now, a team of astronomers, including a professor from MIT, have come up with an idea of what our planet might look like to any advanced alien life looking back.

"Maybe somebody's looking at us right now, finding out what our rotation rate is -- that is, the length of our day," says Sara Seager, associate professor of physics and the Ellen Swallow Richards Associate Professor of Planetary Sciences at MIT. They would also be able to tell that our planet is divided by two oceans and continents and might be able to make some assumptions about our weather systems.

Seager and her colleagues at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, in Spain, have analyzed what astronomers on other worlds might learn about planets from great distances, using telescopes more advanced that what is currently available on Earth. Their study was published online in the Astrophysical Journal, will be printed in the journals April edition.

Most of the planets discovered outside of our solar system have not been seen but they have been observed indirectly by seeing the influence they have on the stars that they orbit. Even with the advanced telescopes planned by astronomers for use over the next few years, the planets would only appear as a single pixel or a single point of light. "The goal of [our] project was to see how much information you can extract" from very limited data, Seager says. A large amount of information can be gathered by viewing the changes of the one pixel image of a planet over time. The way Seager and her team analyze their data would work on any world are made up of solids, liquids and clouds in its atmosphere, even if those worlds were made up of unknown alien materials.

This method depends on clouds partially covering the alien planet's surface. Titan, covered by constant global smog and Venus, completely covered by steam clouds, would not be able to be analyzed.

Information from this post was derived from http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/earth-et-1220.html

Black Hole Simulator

2009-04-20T14:56:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to enter a black hole. This, of course, has never been accomplished but using Einstein's theory of relativity a simulation of what might happen can be made. I've come across a small free program that does just that. The program is very crude but still interesting to see. It is very simply called black hole simulation version 1.0 and is complatible with windows 95 through XP. To give credit where credit is do, I found this at http://www5f.biglobe.ne. I checked the program with norton's antivirus 2009 and it's clean. If you are interested download it here... Black Hole Simulation.

New Earth-Like Planet

2009-04-16T16:36:00.000-07:00

Scientist have discovered a new planet, called Gliese 581 C, outside our solar system in the "Goldilocks", that may support water. The new planet is the right distance from its star to keep water in its liquid form. What does this mean? Where there is water, there can be life.

This new planet is about 150% the size of Earth and is the smallest extrasolar planet known to date. It orbits the Gliese 581, a red dwarf star one third the size of our sun.

The planet is a very important discovery especially because the the planets possibly habitable conditions and its relatively close distance to Earth, making the planet a likely candidate for future missions in search of extraterrestrial life, said Xavier Delfosse of Grenoble University in France.

"On the treasure map of the universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X," Delfosse said.

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2002-04-15T14:09:00.000-07:00

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