With all the recent images from the James Webb Telescope, there is a new sense of wonder and excitement about what lies beyond... Surprisingly, it is not generating a lot of conversation to the undeniable aspect of Climate Change here on our home planet. Days of interplanetary travel like on Star Trek or Guardians of the Galaxy are literal years away. But no longer is it beyond our comprehension.
I tagged this post from SciTech Daily over 2 years ago. It notes a study from Washington State University. It sparked my interest for sharing again because of the collision of the above two topics; Solar Systems and Global Warming. The article is above my pay grade with terms like habitable zone. It points out a Top 24 listing of planets out there that might sustain life. It does get a bit vague on if that means human life as we know it, or just some sort of "life" other than ours. It seeks to find what other factors both different and alike might exist that could also support living organisms.
Apparently the Sun in our Solar System has a relatively low life expectancy of only 10 billion years, of which 4 billion have already passed. So our capacity for existing is already entering our elder lifespan! Yikes. Not that we can even comprehend what the next 6 billion years might hold - good or bad. Climate change may cut those billions in half?
The article throws around other terms like dwarf stars (which would be cooler systems than our hot sun), geothermal heat and geomagnetic fields. Somehow scientists have put all these elements together to come up with this so-called habitable zone. Apparently we are shopping for something with more land mass, more actually density which would reinforce its gravity and certainly a key element - water in some form of clouds, moisture or humidity.
So on our listing of 24 possible planet choices, none of them meet ALL of our criteria. But one checks 4 specific characteristics. So there are remote chances that we could move humankind to a distant planet in a far far galaxy. It boggles the mind and is certainly not going to happen in this lifetime. To Infinity and Beyond!
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