Exoplanets: tantalising search for life beyond the solar system

Yahoo – AFP, Marlowe Hood and Joseph Schmid, October 8, 2019

An artist's impression of the exoplanet 55 Cancri e, a so-called Super Earth in a
solar system some 40 light years away from Earth. (AFP Photo/M. KORNMESSER)

Paris (AFP) - This year's Nobel Prize for Physics honoured Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, Swiss astronomers who proved the existence of a planet orbiting a star far beyond the Earth's solar system.

Their find set off a series of so-called exoplanet discoveries, often with features that are nothing like the nine planets circling our sun.

Here is a backgrounder on the search for far-away planets that could support some form of life -- though not necessarily as we now understand it.

What's an exoplanet?

Any planet outside our solar system is considered an exoplanet.

Although their existence had long been theorised in both research labs and in popular culture -- think "Star Wars" -- until 1995 no one had been able to prove one existed.

By setting their telescopic sights on the Sun-like star 51 Pegasi, part of the Pegasus constellation, Mayor and Queloz found it was wobbling -- the light it emitted was blue as it moved toward them and red as it moved away.

That proved something was circling the star, even though they couldn't see it directly, being some 50 light years from Earth.

Nonetheless they could confirm the planet was gaseous and as big as Jupiter, yet very close to its star -- it had a four-day orbit -- and very hot, confounding theories on what types of celestial bodies would revolve where.

"We thought other systems would be similar to our own," Ulf Danielsson of the Nobel Committee for Physics said in presenting the award Tuesday.

"We were wrong."

How many are out there?

Today there are 4,057 confirmed exoplanets, according to the NASA Exoplanet Archive, and at least as many likely candidates.

The vast majority are far bigger than those of our solar system: there are more than a thousand so-called ice giants, around 1,000 gas giants, and "super Earths" with masses many times higher than the rock we call home.

There are only around 350 smaller terrestrial planets with Earth-like mass, and of those only a handful in a "temperate" zone that would allow for the presence of liquid water -- the key ingredient for life as we know it.

But these are just the planets scientists have detected: several studies have estimated that there could be a trillion exoplanets in our galaxy alone.

Ultimately, there could be as many exoplanets in the universe as there are stars.

How to find them?

There are several ways to find planets that cannot be directly observed, often because the light from their suns is so bright, relatively speaking, that it blocks out smaller objects nearby.

WOBBLE WATCHING - This involves looking for changes in the colour spectrum emitted by a star due to the gravitational pull of one or more invisible planets.

If these patterns are regular and cyclical, corresponding to a tiny wobble in the star, chances are they are caused by a planet. Nearly 18 percent of exoplanets have been found this way.

SHADOW SEARCHING - When a planet passes directly between its star and an observer -- an astronomer peering through a telescope, or a satellite in space -- it dims the star's light by a tiny but measurable amount.

This "transit" method has been the most successful so far -- NASA's Kepler spacecraft used it to find thousands of candidate planets from 2009 to 2013, and around 80 percent of all exoplanets have been found this way.

More recently, NASA's TESS satellite was launched in 2018, able to analyse much brighter stars for smaller planets, and the European CHEOPS satellite, which aims to better analyse known exoplanets, is set for launch in the coming weeks.

PICTURE PRODUCING - Snapping a picture of an exoplanet in front of its star is akin to trying to photograph a microscopic speck of dust on a glowing lightbulb. But by removing the blinding glare of the star, astronomers can capture an image, a method called direct imaging.

Only just more than one percent of distant planets have been detected this way.

BEAM BENDING - In this technique, light from a distant star is bent and focused by gravity as an orbiting planet passes between the star and Earth.

Called gravitational micro-lensing, the gravity of the planet and star focus light rays of the distant planet on an observer in the same way that a magnifying glass focuses the sun's light onto a tiny, bright spot. Only a handful of exoplanets have been found using this method.

What conditions might support life?

Of the exoplanets found to date, only a handful are in a "temperate" zone in relation to their star: not so hot that water evaporates, not so cold that it freezes solid.

Life on Earth is also unimaginable without an atmosphere, containing in our case the oxygen organisms need to survive. An atmosphere also protects animal species in particular from damaging high-energy radiation from a star's ultraviolet and X-rays.

But without a definitive understanding as to how life emerged on Earth, it is possible that living creatures elsewhere in the universe could survive and thrive in gases, chemicals or temperatures that would be lethal for us.

Scientists are now evaluating potential chemical combinations that might indicate alien life -- which might be nothing like we know it.

#UPDATE As a student astronomer some 25 years ago, Nobel Laureate Didier Queloz spent months doubting the data that led him to an inescapable conclusion: he'd just discovered the first planet outside Earth's solar systemhttps://t.co/P358ZEyd8C#NobelPrize2019 #NobelPhysics

— AFP news agency (@AFP) 8 oktober 2019

Related Articles:

"The Big Picture - You Are Not Alone" -  Feb 2012 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll)

"Common Questions from Non-Lightworkers" - Feb 2012 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll)

"... Question Three: Is there life on other planets?

Are you kidding? There's life everywhere. Everywhere! Right now, your scientists are searching for microbial life on all the planets and their moons in your solar system, and they will eventually find it. They expect to find it. They will eventually understand that the seeds of life are everywhere.

How much life might there be? How long has it been "out there"? When science starts to realize the scope of how long life has been in your galaxy, they will begin to see something counterintuitive to evolution - their own Human history. How old is your Universe? Ask your scientists and they will say about 13 billion years. That's OK. Let's use their numbers. How old is your own planet - 4 or 5 billion, perhaps? Correct. But how old is humanity? Why weren't you here with the dinosaurs? You think the earth wasn't ready? Do you think that perhaps that which controls evolution was a little too stupid to make a Human sooner, but the process could make a dinosaur? Have you ever thought about these things?

If you put the earth's entire history into a 24-hour clock, life itself only started in the last hour and humanity, all of civilization, happened the last few seconds. Isn't that odd to you? Therefore, in a Universe that may be 13 billion years old, you arrived in the last few seconds. Did you ever think maybe you're the newest ones on the block? Well, you'd be right.

If the Universe is really that old, do you think perhaps there are civilizations in your galaxy that might be a billion or more years older than you? If that's the case, do you think perhaps they have gone through anything you're going through? Do you think any of them might have had your DNA attributes? Perhaps they also went through what you are going through spiritually? Perhaps they even went into a quantum ascension status? The answer is dozens of them.

You already know them and you've listed them in your publications. The ones who directly seeded you are called Pleiadians. The ones who seeded them might be Octurian and the ones who seeded them may be even Orion. They're everywhere, and they're all here as well. They're looking at you, for you are the ones who are next, and you are passing this marker of the shift.

Oh, dear ones, it's going to be a long time before you really know any of these things to be your reality. The first step is peace on Earth. The next is a new kind of Human evolution that is going to increase your DNA efficiency to 100% and you're going to live a long time. Every time I say that, there are Humans in their intellectual mind saying, "Well, there is a geometric birth rate going on. We're not going to make it. It's going to over-crowd and we are going to run out of food. So what you're saying, Kryon, can't be a good thing. We're all going to be suffering and killing each other for food."

Let me address this, for if that is your thought, Human, you are assuming Humans are stupid and haven't figured out what's going on and why there's so much birth. You assume they can't control it because they haven't figured it out? I want to tell you, you're going to see something you didn't expect. You're going to see a decline in birth rate because Humans are smart and they're getting smarter. They're going to see that quality of life is linked to the number of children they have, and they're going to figure out the solution. It won't be how many children their church says they should have. They are going to do it intuitively. You're going to see it sooner than not.

You are going to see wisdom on the planet in many areas that no sociologist would ever have predicted. You will surprise them all, and it's going to happen without a government program. It's going to happen because you decide you want it. It's going to happen collectively, and you may even see it soon. Look for negative birth rates in first-world countries. Where Humans are able to see a larger picture and have freedom of information, the situation will not be what you have predicted.

Is there life on other planets? The scientists are saying, "It's going to be a long time before we get to the stars, you know? We have to get in this little metal can and put air in it, and then travel in it for years and years before we ever get to the next star." Meanwhile, a Pleiadian can do it in the blink of an eye! What do you think is going on there? Do you even believe me?

Not long ago, if you wanted to communicate to someone far away, you sent a letter. It was carried by a horse. It took a month to get a response. Now you communicate instantly!  Why is this so unbelievable to you about travel?

I will tell you, as long as you stay in 3D, you'll still be getting in little metal cans and air suits and going to planets. As soon as you begin the quantum age, however, you will simply wish yourself there, because you will be entangled with everything and can go with intent. If you don't believe this now, you will later, for what I give you is true. It may be lifetimes and lifetimes from now, but the group that is before me is the group that is going to come back over and over and over. The difference is that you're done coming back in an old energy. This is a new energy. ..”

"The Biggest Filter" - July 18-19, 2015 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Text version)

“..  Physics - Sticking To The Known

Physicists are among the kinds of scientists who expect change through discovery, and who absolutely know that they are unaware of how everything works. It comes with the territory of being a physicist. Yet the mistakes they make in their bias are the same as the computer scientist. They take their truth from known absolute physics in 3D and then apply this truth to everything they don't know.

I point to the revelation and the discoveries of astronomer Vera Rubin. When she found out that stars that orbit the middle of your galaxy don't behave within the gravitational laws of Newton or the laws of planetary motion from Kepler, it was a major discovery. Your solar system moves around the sun in highly definable 3D laws of motion. The objects that are further away from the sun go slower. The ones closer to the sun go faster. However, her discovery showed that stars orbiting the galaxy had this reversed! The stars that are further away from the middle go faster. What she discovered was that all of the stars go the same speed in relationship to the middle, like they were pasted on a plate, all revolving together around the center. They do not follow the rules of the physics that you know.

So, what did the physicists and astronomers do with this major new information? Instead of seeing a brand new paradigm, they instead used Newton's laws and computed what would have to be "out there" to make this happen. Dark matter! It had to be mysterious, invisible matter that was creating this very strange and enormous new Newtonian attribute. Instead of looking at this and saying, "There is a new law of physics happening here that we don't yet know about," they kept it within the Newton box and renamed it, "Altered Newtonian Physics". That's funny! That's like a situation when you discovered the earth was round and called it the "Altered Flat-Earth Principle"!

Newton's name is still attached, but his 3D laws have nothing to do with anything Ruben discovered. Dark matter does not exist! It's a made-up energy to satisfy an old law that doesn't apply! Instead, there is a new law of physics that you haven't seen yet. It's a multidimensional law having to do with modified entanglement. Modified entangled objects are created because of what is in the middle of the galaxy. The immense push-pull twin energy at the middle of each galaxy is not simplistic like your sun is to your own solar system. It does not have Kepler rules, since it's not mass that's just orbiting naturally. Yet, you think it is, since it looks similar: The galaxy has stars circling it in space. Someday, you'll slap your heads in revelation of what you did with this, and you will change the rules.

Now to esoteric astronomy: Look what you've done with the idea that you came from the Pleiadians. There are some scientists laughing right now who smugly say that the mythology of the Pleiadians being your seed biology is simply not possible. It's not possible because of astronomical history, and what they now know about the constellation itself.

Pleiadian Connection - Mythology?

Let's talk about the Pleiadian system, the Seven Sisters. Let's talk about the truth of it, and then let's discuss what science says is the mythology of it. We will tell you what you don't see and don't comprehend, simply because of your existing knowledge.

You call this constellation the Seven Sisters [M45]. The physical facts are that there are hundreds of stars in this Pleiades group. Circling these stars is a nebula (dust particles and gas). This creates a wonderful blue tinge that you can see in the heavens on a clear night. With distance and atmospheric attributes against you, the naked eye can only perceive what appears to be seven stars (or clusters), hence the name Seven Sisters. However, there are actually nine when you use a telescope. Each of the nine have been identified with names, but again, there are actually hundreds of stars.

The Seven Sisters are approximately 440 light years away. From the viewpoint of astronomy and distances, that's close - very close! Now, here's what science says is wrong with your mythology about the Pleiadians: The constellation is way too young! The whole system of the Pleiades is far too young to have developed life. It's only approximately 100 million years old - a baby! The galaxy is four billion years old [according to your science] and your planet is at least a billion of that. Yet, the Pleiadians are only a tiny fraction of that, only 100 million.

So here is what science says: The mythology has most of the ancients of this planet claiming the Pleiadians as their seeds. However, this is impossible due to the age of the stars. The suppositions and logic are applied this way: What you saw on earth happens everywhere in the galaxy. That's incorrect, and quite humorous! Your bias is that life develops only a certain way, based upon the way it developed here. Not only is that incorrect in general, but the possibility has never even been broached that perhaps, just perhaps, the Pleiadian life as you think it exists was actually implanted there! How about that? Perhaps it didn't evolve from there at all! So to dismiss a possibility completely due to only the knowledge of what you have here may result in a totally illogical conclusion. Then there is the question, "How did those Pleiadians get so advanced so quickly?" [Wink]

These are just little vignettes of possibility, which I throw to you this evening to give you things to think about. The Pleiadians who are here are smiling, and they know you so well. You may be the new kids on the block because life just developed on your planet, but the Pleiadians had an entirely different scenario from what you had. To become an ascended planet, they needed certain kinds of pushes from certain other kinds of planets. They had their own seed biology! Dear ones, it's important to start thinking out of the box of your knowledge and open up to possibilities that are not what you've seen here.  ….”