There may be life in in extra-solar systems.
AB Wire
A new theory propounded by the scientists from Rice University suggests that there might have been life on Venus and Earth would have been a dead planet if conditions had been a little bit different.
According to the researchers, minor changes taken place billions of years ago might have changed the conditions on Venus and Earth. The study has been published in the journal of Astrobiology.
Rice Earth scientist Adrian Lenardic is hopeful that they may be able to model the concept soon through observation of other solar systems, particularly ones in the process of forming.
According to Lenardic and his colleagues, there may be life outside Goldilocks zone in extra-solar systems and planets farther from or closer to their suns than earth may have conditions necessary for life.
The Goldilocks zone has long been defined as the band of space around a star that is not too warm, not too cold, rocky and with the right conditions for maintaining surface water and a breathable atmosphere. But these assumptions are only based on the conditions on our own solar system.
“For a long time we’ve been living, effectively, in one experiment, our solar system. Although the paper is about planets, in one way it’s about old issues that scientists have: the balance between chance and necessity, laws and contingencies, strict determinism and probability,” said Adrian Lenardic.
“But in another way, it asks whether, if you could run the experiment again, would it turn out like this solar system or not? For a long time, it was a purely philosophical question. Now that we’re observing solar systems and other planets around other stars, we can ask that as a scientific question,” he added.
Lenardic says that if life is found in a planet outside our solar system, then we will realize that what we see in our solar system is not universal. To expand this view, the scientists have determined that the life on earth is not necessarily based on the Goldilocks concept. Some small changes in the conditions prevailed in the early days of the planet formation may have made the earth inhospitable.
The theory also questions the concept that plate tectonics is a critical reason for the existence of life on earth. “There’s debate about this, but the Earth in its earliest lifetimes, let’s say 2-3 billion years ago, would have looked for all intents and purposes like an alien planet,” Lenardic said.
“We know the atmosphere was completely different, with no oxygen. There’s a debate that plate tectonics might not have been operative,” he added.