This statement caught my eye. "Scientists have long figured that if life begins on a planet, it needs a solid surface to rest on, so finding one elsewhere is a big deal." QUESTION: Didn't life start in the ocean? Wouldn't that make on conclude that a liquid state was more necessary. Rocket River http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090916/ap_on_sc/us_sci_rocky_planet Found: Firm place to stand outside solar system Buzz up!230 votes Send Email IM Share Delicious Digg Facebook Fark Newsvine Reddit StumbleUpon Technorati Twitter Yahoo! Bookmarks Print AP – This image provided by the European Southern Observatory Wednesday Sept. 16, 2009 shows an artist rendition … By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer – 54 mins ago WASHINGTON – Astronomers have finally found a place outside our solar system where there's a firm place to stand — if only it weren't so broiling hot. As scientists search the skies for life elsewhere, they have found more than 300 planets outside our solar system. But they all have been gas balls or can't be proven to be solid. Now a team of European astronomers has confirmed the first rocky extrasolar planet. Scientists have long figured that if life begins on a planet, it needs a solid surface to rest on, so finding one elsewhere is a big deal. "We basically live on a rock ourselves," said co-discoverer Artie Hatzes, director of the Thuringer observatory in Germany. "It's as close to something like the Earth that we've found so far. It's just a little too close to its sun." So close that its surface temperature is more than 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit, too toasty to sustain life. It circles its star in just 20 hours, zipping around at 466,000 mph. By comparison, Mercury, the planet nearest our sun, completes its solar orbit in 88 days. "It's hot, they're calling it the lava planet," Hatzes said. This is a major discovery in the field of trying to find life elsewhere in the universe, said outside expert Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution. It was the buzz of a conference on finding an Earth-like planet outside our solar system, held in Barcelona, Spain, where the discovery was presented Wednesday morning. The find is also being published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. The planet is called Corot-7b. It was first discovered earlier this year. European scientists then watched it dozens of times to measure its density to prove that it is rocky like Earth. It's in our general neighborhood, circling a star in the winter sky about 500 light-years away. Each light-year is about 6 trillion miles. Four planets in our solar system are rocky: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. In addition, the planet is about as close to Earth in size as any other planet found outside our solar system. Its radius is only one-and-a-half times bigger than Earth's and it has a mass about five times the Earth's. Now that another rocky planet has been found so close to its own star, it gives scientists more confidence that they'll find more Earth-like planets farther away, where the conditions could be more favorable to life, Boss said. "The evidence is becoming overwhelming that we live in a crowded universe," Boss said.
You know this but you aren't thinking it. The ocean just covers up the rocky plates below it. Our planet is still covered by a solid surface.
One day, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years away (if we make it), we should be able to just move that planet further away from its sun somehow, no?
Question: Is a solid surface necessary for liquid to form/exist? I don't think it is. I don't think it would be crazy to think among those gaseous balls that some liquid state exists. I mean. in the transition from Gas to Solid . . . Liquid is in the middle right. Gas --> Liquid --> Solid So if you have a Gaseous Liquid situation . . .I would be one to beleive life could exist there. . . . .without the necessity of a solid surface. Esp when you consider microorganisms. Rocket River
I'm not a scientist so I can't answer you. I was just pointing out that life beginning in the ocean doesn't dispute the need for solid ground as there is in fact solid earth at the ocean floor.
by the same token. Solid earth , happening to be present, does not prove that it *needed* to be there. Rocket River
The exception to this rule being sublimation and deposition. Solid <---> Gas Even in the Miller-Urey experiments, the liquids were contained using a solid base (obviously, as this is how our physics works). The elements used in the reactions were liquids and gases, the basic need for a solid foundation, even if it served no function in the process itself, somewhere perhaps shouldn't be overlooked. But then again, who are we to superimpose our abiogenesis on to other planetary systems?
This is what I never understood even when I was young. Scientists always speak of being open-minded and looking for answers, yet most only thought life could exist in almost perfect Earth-like conditions. It just never seemed reasonable to rule out other life on other systems because they weren't Earth. Granted it is our only current model, but even here life exists in places we didn't think were possible. I wouldn't be surprised if we found life in our own solar system on a place like Europa, Enceladas, Titan or somewhere else. I can only hope it'll be in my life.
Unless I mistaken I have read where reactions etc where done inside strong Magnetic Fields [maybe nuclear] That being the case I would think that strong gravitational field could serve as a solid enough foundation Rocket River
I think this rocky planet is still liquid. They said it is the lava planet, so their rock is liquid. Another planet in the same solar system, with the same make-up but further from it's sun, would be cooler and actually solid. Just guessing from the article posted.
This isn't the first terrestrial planet discovered outside our solar system, though, is it? Aren't Gliese-581-c and OGLE-05-169L-b both terrestrial planets?
Even if life DID start in water, the eggs of those organisms (or the cells to be multiplied into genetically-transformed beings) had to have been laid on a surface.
Whoever doesn't believe that there isn't life elsewhere is ignorant. Just because we needed carbon, water, oxygen, and a solid surface doesn't mean that life can't exist without these elsewhere. We know only how "our" evolution transpired and deem it as necessary. Us trying to prove it without means of any type of realistic transportation is silly, but what else can they do at this point?
