Review of Mathew Anderson’s Habitable exoplanets: Red Dwarfs like TRAPPIST-1

Review of Mathew Anderson’s Habitable exoplanets: Red Dwarfs like TRAPPIST-1

Last Wednesday night while watching the Weekly Space Hangout on youtube live there was an offer if interested you can get an e-book copy of the book written by Mathew Anderson. So I wrote the e-mail and got a copy of the book last night (Sunday).

The book is only 66 pages but it is crammed with a lot of facts and theories about these stars and how people thinks comes about on these planets. The book does discuss that red dwarf stars do emit a lot of solar flares. Also they emit ultraviolet radiation but instead of the penetrating UVB and UVC the mostly emit UVA radiation so the radiation would probably would not do as much damage to DNA in cells in already existing life, Also it is discussed how this might not be helpful for evolving life because they would not be as many mutations. The composition of the atmosphere in touched such as the green house effect and how planets can lose atmosphere and how geological processes can recycle carbon dioxide and other gases. The TRAPPIST-1 planets have been found to less dense then the Earth, so there should be a lot of water which might hinder the development of life, I wish the author discussed brown dwarfs and the planets around them or the moons around the planets in theses systems and the chances of life on them. The book is worth read and the 1 or 2 hours it probably will take read it.

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Planets Forming Around Forming Stars

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018AJ….155…54W?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

This survey was done by ALMA telescope (Altacama Large Millimetre Array) in Chile It observes a star forming region in the constellation of Taurus 140 pc (430ly) away and is one of the closest star forming regions. The observations were done 24 stars in the m4-m7,75 spectral classes, 2 stars had there disks transiting or edge to Earth. These stars were mostly what referred to red dwarf class, small cool stars and some were brown dwarfs which are considered somewhere between a star and a planet.

The star forming region is a molecular cloud. It is called this because it is so dense that the ionization UV radiation does not penetrate the cloud and molecules of H₂ still exist in and are not broken apart by the UV radiation. The problem with this is that H₂ is hard to detect because it does not emit much. Usually tracer molecules are used such as CH, OH, CS and C₂H₂ These clouds tend be around 50 pc or. 163 ly across wit a temperature around 20 k with a density of 200-300 particles per square cm and have a mass 10 ⁶ the mass of the sun.

The survey measured objects that are forming in this molecular cloud. This is useful because it helps us understand how stars and planets are formed. If you can see a star when the dust is just collapsing, then another further along when the disk is formed and later when the first planets are show up you can make theories and models showing all the stages of how such a system forms. These stars are have a disk rotating around a central star or are binaries. There 3 binaries known in the group and 2 now a suspect to be binary stars after this survey. Most of the stars in the survey were 1-2 million years old with a couple that might be 20 million years old, these stars burn for about trillion years so this not much of a difference, The disk tend to have 0.2% to 0.6% of that of the parent object and had a radius of 20 to 40 AU for the smaller disks to 100 AU for the larger disks.

Hopefully the last of Winter

 

An apple tree, a cherry tree hedge. the tilted pair tree and a general shot in part of the yard.

Some winter scenes

The Wrath Of Khan

A Study in Exobiology

The Wrath of Khan is probably one of the best if not the best Star Trek movie but I do not want to start a holy war like Coke vs. Pepsi or Mac vs. PC. The reason why this movie is so good because it explores many themes such as revenge, an absentee father being introduced to his son and the question of terraforming a planet for human colonization. The main plot is focused around a device called the Geneses device which changes a planet and creates life within days on any planet.

In the beginning of the movie the have star ship looking for a planet that has no life on it. This brings up an interesting question what is life. Is it something that reproduces like crystals which forms the same pattern over and over, or like fire that consumes material and changes and gives of heat. Does the chemicals that are the precursors to life which have been found the cores of small meteorites.

Can you point life on any old planet in the universe, or is there certain places where life can survive after it is formed. One thing modern astronomers look for when they are looking for planets is how far away form the star and what type of star it is. If it is around a small cool star, the planets have to be closer to the planet has to be for liquid water to exist which is necessary for life as we know to thrive. If it is a larger hotter star it has to be further away for water not be gas. Also another consideration is the size of the planet. Smaller planets would not have the gravity to hold onto an atmosphere while larger planets like Jupiter sized planets would be mostly atmosphere with a no solid ground for life to live on. There is a chance that life could exist in the clouds but this just hypothetical at the moment. The larger planets might have moons that might be large enough for life to develop. Other considerations that might affect life is whether or not of the planet is geologically active. Earth is geologically active, materials are moved into the planet at where the seismic plates met and are released by volcanoes. This is important for substances for water and carbon dioxide. Mars on the other hand once was actice and is not any more. Mars does not hold on water or carbon so without active volcanoes has nothing to replace these substances. The moons of Jupiter and Saturn such as Europa, Enceladus and Titan might have what is called cyro-volcanoism which similar but ice replaces rock, This process might be useful in determining what is going under the surface of Europa and Enceladus where life might be. Titan actually has an atmosphere of carbon compounds instead of mostly nitrogen and oxygen here on Earth.
Other thing that might affect if there is life on a planet is that if the atmosphere blocks harmful parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. All stars emits light in all wavelengths and depending on the size and temperature of the star. They might emit light might be harmful for life.

Would a device like the geneses device exist in real life, probably not. I better way would be find a planet that match the Earth as much as possible Use things like plants and bacteria to change the atmosphere if need be and change the planet in a gradual way. <.p>

A Winter Morning Picture

The Last Jedi

Whenever I see “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” it is a happy day even with Jar-Jar in it. This Saturday was no exception while viewing The Last Jedi. It begins with the resistance leaving its base with Star Destroyers in orbit and then a lone X-wing appears to deliver a message From the resistance leader Princess Leah. The leader of the First Order is called Hux who looks like he started shaving, this reflects the comparison to the Nazis who in the last days WWII were using younger and younger soldiers. He has a lot to learn more history especially recent history dealing with SkyWalkers. Such as your opponent spat in Vaders face. Later in the movie he tries to pull rank on Kylo Ren, there he has to remember this is Vaders grandson. Kylo is no Darth Vader tho no matter how big of a hissy fit he throws during battles but has grandfathers angry.
Rose is the only new character that probably will stick around to the other movies. She reminds Finn that you should not fight against what you hate but what you love. This was the Skywalkers undoing, all three of them, Anakin gave into the hate of slavery and that Jedi order for the code turning him int Darth Vader. Leah and Luke used their righteous hate of the empire and Vader, this just lead to decades of war that tore the Republic apart. There was no replacement for Han in this movie. BB8 stole a lot of scenes demonstrating that size matters not.
There are plenty of throwback to the original movies which highlights Lukes journey thru the force. In the beginning of the movie we find out he has cut himself from people and the force because he felt guilty over allowing Kylo to go the darkside. Later an old friend points out that failure is greatest teacher and that he should not have turned his back on the force and the galaxy. Young Skywalker does eventually help the resistance in an unique way.
There was a lot attention on the internet spen on the fate of one character because the actor who played this character has passed. There are several points were they bring her close but time after time they prove she is tougher than a Star Destroyer. The other character was Supreme Commander Snook who basically did some parlour tricks and that was that.
At the end of the movie the show what is what of the resistance being carried off in the Millennium Falcon in hyperspace. The resistance now lives in the hearts of people thru out the galaxy. Now the First Order should be afraid, very afraid.

Lava Lamps

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Some more pictures

story part whatever

This is part of a story that may or may not be finished but has to post something

Rome

Remus and Sparta were twin planets that orbited around a common barycenter as they orbited what was called in the past a brown dwarf. The sub-star was called Rome. Rome was a dark almost brown red thru most of the body with a red strip at the equator with swirls of the bright red thru some of the body, Also from time to time a small body will fall into Rome and leave a red spot on the body for a short time. To the north of the star was mostly intergalactic space with a couple of globular clusters and to the south was the Orion spur of the milky galaxy. The system was set as a research base in the beginning as were all the settlements at the time. The two planets orbiting each other offered a unique situation to experiment on more efficient ways of entering an exiting hyperspace. Sparta eventually got a military base to protect against the chance of pirates in the area. Over the next hundred years the military governors took more and more range under their supervision, Eventually one of the governors decided to separate from rest of humanity and setup a military dictatorship.