Planets Capable of Sustaining Life

For hundreds of years, mankind has posed some questions that have yet to be answered. One of the more popular of these is “are we alone?”  Every day it seems like some lunatic is reporting a UFO sighting. To this day, some people believe that there is life on Mars and on other planets out further in space. It seems kind of scary that our planet Earth is the only planet on which there is life. Unfortunately, it will take hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of years before we are finally able to conclude weather we are alone in this universe or not. In 1977, the Voyager spacecraft was launched by NASA to areas beyond our solar system. It carries an audio recording with the voices of humans in over 50 languages. This is used to alert alien creatures of our existence, if we find them and they exist of course.

Recently, the Kepler space program has found three “Super Earth Size planets” that may be capable of sustaining life. These planets orbit their stars at a distance at which it is possible for water to exist. The planets under investigation are Kepler 62e, Kepler 62f and Kepler 69c. Since these planets are located 1200 light years away from us, it will be a very long time before we figure out if these planets really have the ability to sustain life.

After reading this article, I am left wondering about the possibilities of there really being life outside of planet earth. What would be the chances that it actually exists, and if it does exist, what are the chances that we will actually find it? Our Universe is constantly expanding, and there many planets that we do not yet know about. What is the possibility that we humans will find and study every solar system out there looking for life? When you think about it, finding every solar system let alone planet is almost impossible, for today’s technology. We will only have to hope that future advances in technology will help us find planets with the potential for life.

Some research has shown that these chances of finding life on other planets may be higher than we expect it to be. According to this article, planets orbiting red dwarfs may be capable of sustaining life. Red dwarfs make up eighty percent of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy. The only problem with this theory is that Red Dwarfs are small, and dim. Their habitable zone is also very small, less than the distance between our sun and Mercury. Although this may seem like a concern, the European Space Agency conducted a test with 102 red dwarfs, and the results showed that 41 percent of them could contain planets in their habitable zone.

There is another problem with the habitable zone of red dwarfs. The planets are so close to the stars that the radiation outputted to the planets would be quite high. Planets in that area would have to have a magnetic field around them to stop the high level of radiation. This may make it seem like it is difficult for life on planets around red dwarfs, but just because us humans cannot tolerate high levels of radiation doesn't mean that other creatures cannot. Life living on planets that orbit red dwarfs may be able to survive large amounts of radiation without effect.

All of this makes me wonder, is it possible that life exists outside of our planet? There are thousands of planets out there in our ever expanding universe, and there are new ones being created right now. Sometimes I wonder which is the better question to ask, “What are the chances of there being life outside of planet Earth?” or “What are the chances that planet Earth is the only planet capable of sustaining life?”  

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