Planet found in Earth's nearest neighbour star system

[AlNom]

"Some heat" meaning enough to cause nitrogen to evaporate off the equator and re-freeze around the poles; still so far below freezing it's ridiculous, obviously.

I think he meant in relation to the formation of mountains, which... who knows. Either through volcanic activity or through plate tectonics. Or it's possible it happened very very early in the life of the dwarf planet, and the fact that Pluto is so far out meant that there would be very few things to erode such features away even after bajillions of years -> likely there's nothing there anymore.

If there ever was anything even approaching life on Pluto, I promise to eat like a million hats...

Gaben is rich enough, thank you. :V

 

[iroboto]

You contradict yourself. At the same time you mention speculations back in the 60s (when they simply didn't have the technology to prove this) and how other information from previous time frames could be outdated.

Let's simply assume that technically it is impossible that all the water came via asteroids or comets simply because the volume on the planet is so enormous. And that the gas itself can be evenly distributed in the primary planetary discs.

No further comment on the life is brought by comet - just tell me where and how it happened on the comet in the first place.
That's simply ridiculous because comets don't travel between solar systems.

I didn't say that water came from asteroids. Who said that? Did you watch the episode or are you just refusing to read anything?
Stars are fusion reactors where hydrogen atoms continually ram the core creating new atoms. Eventually that star gets heavier and denser until it explodes, where the process of gravity begins again and planets and stars form. Those atoms will eventually start gravitating towards each other again and planets and new stars are formed. That's how we have oxygen, and that's how we have our periodic table of elements. One method we know how old the Earth is because of Uranium-Lead dating.

Who said asteroids don't travel between solar systems, I need a citation on that? I'm fairly confident that they travel through galaxies, I don't know where you got your information from. There are tons of things in space that we cannot see because they are too far from a light source.
Watch the episode, you'll get your answers there. If you think your knowledge is better than Neil Degrasse Tyson, and Carl Sagan then you're welcome to believe your version of events. For me, I'm going to trust the guys that have been studying the cosmos as a job for years.

 

[AlNom]

I didn't say that water came from asteroids.

Indeed. Workloads do not just descend from the heavens.

Eventually that star gets heavier and denser until it explodes, where the process of gravity begins again and planets and stars form. Those atoms will eventually start gravitating towards each other again and planets and new stars are formed. That's how we have oxygen, and that's how we have our periodic table of elements. One method we know how old the Earth is because of Uranium-Lead dating.

Rather curious about the role of the magnetosphere. Seemingly, oxygen is the third most abundant element in the universe next to Hydrogen and Helium, respectively.

 

[iroboto]

Indeed. Workloads do not just descend from the heavens.



Rather curious about the role of the magnetosphere. Seemingly, oxygen is the third most abundant element in the universe next to Hydrogen and Helium, respectively.

uhh, a bit hazy on the topic. But we're referring to the magnetosphere that protects us from the radiation that the sun hits us with? IIRC I believe that magnetosphere is caused by our iron molten core that is constantly spinning. That spinning is what creates the magnetosphere from my understanding has played a pivotal role in allowing life to survive, as it deflects cosmic radiation away from Earth's inhabitants.

 

[AlNom]

uhh, a bit hazy on the topic. But we're referring to the magnetosphere that protects us from the radiation that the sun hits us with? IIRC I believe that magnetosphere is caused by our iron molten core that is constantly spinning. That spinning is what creates the magnetosphere from my understanding has played a pivotal role in allowing life to survive, as it deflects cosmic radiation away from Earth's inhabitants.

In a nutshell, yeah.

So we kinda need the atmosphere to hold in all those things or something. I think. Can't have the evil dihydrogen monoxide evaporating away. :>

 

[UniversalTruth]

I didn't say that water came from asteroids. Who said that?

Nope, you began to argue my initial post.
About who said that.... well, recently, this is one of the most discussed science topics.
Type "water comet" in google and you will see who speculates all the time and why.

Who said asteroids don't travel between solar systems, I need a citation on that?

I said this because obviously even if asteroids and other debris travel through deep space, they are much less compared to those which are locked around the mother star.
The chance is so small that I consider it negligible.

And again, you need a home planet on which life appears, and then after an impact, a part of that planet can travel in the form of an asteroid.

Nope, I don't have time to watch anything now.

 

[iroboto]

Nope, you began to argue my initial post.
About who said that.... well, recently, this is one of the most discussed science topics.
Type "water comet" in google and you will see who speculates all the time and why.

I never took a side on the debate of whether asteroids bring water to planets. It took me all of two seconds to google this.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30414519

You should take some time out to watch the Cosmos episode.

I didn't argue your initial post, you may have interpreted it that way but I didn't. I commented was about whether you needed water for life to exist, hence I brought up the concept of asteroids possibly seeding planets (of bacterium life, not of water). Likely that life would have come from somewhere else, where from no one knows. But we have no idea how many cycles has occurred, how many big bangs may have occurred. We just know time as we understand it, begins at big bang. I can't answer your question, I lack the qualifications to and likely the possibilities are endless.

The chance is so small that I consider it negligible.

Our sun is a young sun that is estimated to be 4.6 billion years. Every month the people here play Lotto Max (7/7 numbers) estimated chance of winning is 1: 20,963,833. And when the prize pool is big enough for that week, people win the grand prize, with a sub set of people much smaller than 20 million.
I wouldn't call that negligible - the estimated chance an asteroid can hit earth is supposed to be 1:66K. A travelling asteroid is obviously going to be much smaller than a local one, in the 4.6 Billion years our young sun has been around, I think it's highly possible for anything to have happened.

 

[UniversalTruth]

Likely that life would have come from somewhere else, where from no one knows.

Let's only consider chemistry. For now, we know that Earth has the proper chemistry to sustain life.
And we speculate that possibly some high resistance bacteria can travel on asteroids and comets, seed life* (primitive) on planets, which afterwards we can't tell whether evolves to something more complex or not.

We don't even have a clear concept as to what exactly life is. Are souls life or life is just our bodies?

 

[iroboto]

Let's only consider chemistry. For now, we know that Earth has the proper chemistry to sustain life.
And we speculate that possibly some high resistance bacteria can travel on asteroids and comets, seed life* (primitive) on planets, which afterwards we can't tell whether evolves to something more complex or not.

We don't even have a clear concept as to what exactly life is. Are souls life or life is just our bodies?

I don't know, lol a little too deep for me, I think it's amazing we can actually have this discussion period. Let alone for the fact that you are in one part of the world and I am in another speaking only minutes apart. Everything we have achieved so far is truly a testament as to the intelligence of the human race. I think if we can figure out FTL travel and terraforming, we've really made it as a race.

I only brought up the hypothesis of a possible life distribution method which is termed : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia
I think the term you are looking for or discussion is called: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis which is life starting from matter/non living things.

 

[Alexko]

Life travelling on asteroids and whatnot and falling down on Earth is a theoretical possibility of course, but that life would have had to evolve somewhere, then survived being blown off into space, surviving all the hard ionizing radiation flying around out there, the vacuum, the low - and sometimes high - temperatures, and then falling down here through our atmosphere (starting off at orbital velocity of like 15-25km/s) - sum total, it's a lot less likely than life having evolved right here. Seems to me, if you really believe life originated somewhere else, you have to be a fucking nutcase...

It's not that implausible if you consider bacterial-ish organisms in crevices or deep holes, where they would be somewhat protected from radiation, sunlight, and entering the atmosphere. And even relatively complex organisms are known to survive extreme temperatures, vacua, or amounts of radiation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade

It doesn't seem like the most likely way for life to appear on Earth, but it's plausible.

 

[NRP]

We need more nutball and less universal truth in here.

 

[UniversalTruth]

New Horizons: Latest image shows frozen plains on Pluto's 'heart'
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...w-frozen-plains-on-plutos-heart-10397874.html

 

[UniversalTruth]

 

[UniversalTruth]

New Horizons: Scientists admit they were completely wrong about ‘inert’ Pluto

Extraordinary photographs from the mission have shown vast plains, 3,000-metre mountains, possible volcanoes, rift valleys and other features suggesting it has a molten core and shifting tectonic plates.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...pletely-wrong-about-inert-pluto-10400272.html

 

[moon stalker marty]

Largest Structure In Universe, Large Quasar Group, Challenges Cosmological Principle

But the record-breaking quasar group, which Clowes and his team spotted in data gathered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, is on another scale altogether. The newfound LQC is composed of 73 quasars and spans about 1.6 billion light-years in most directions, though it is 4 billion light-years across at its widest point. To put that mind-boggling size into perspective, the disk of the Milky Way galaxy — home of Earth's solar system — is about 100,000 light-years wide. And the Milky Way is separated from its nearest galactic neighbor, Andromeda, by about 2.5 million light-years.

Woah.

 

[Arwin]

Wow, so those mountains on Pluto are likely to be water-ice - so theoretically the whole surface could be ice covering a huge sea, and the reason you don't see many craters and so on could basically be because they'd just sink down into the ice, and below the water a lot of seismic activity could still be taking place causing hot water to come up and melt the ice, changing (and 'cleaning') the surface. It also makes me wonder if the icebergs then form because of erupting hot water that freezes, or frozen blocks of ice that drift up, or whatever. Very interesting.