What if #Earth moved a mile closer to the #Sun? The concept of a #habitablezone, sometimes referred to as the “Goldilocks Zone,” is vital to life. - http://clapway.com/2015/09/06/habitable-zone123/

While NASA’s New Horizons flies by Pluto and targets new destinations farther than we can imagine, examining our relationship with the Sun could help explain why the Earth can sustain life. What if Earth moved a mile closer to the Sun? Would we all burn up? Would our atmosphere disintegrate? Would we have an extreme runaway greenhouse effect and dry up like Venus? The concept of a habitable zone, sometimes referred to as the “Goldilocks Zone,” is vital in order to explain the possibilities.

WOULD MOVING EARTH CLOSER HAVE A BIG EFFECT?

Since the Earth’s orbit is an ellipse, not a circle, its distance from the sun varies from a minimum of 147.1 million kilometers each January to a maximum of about 152.1 million kilometers each July. The range of this distance has little effect on Earth’s weather with the Northern Hemisphere’s summer occurring during the time that Earth is farthest from the Sun and winter occurring when Earth is closest to the Sun.

THE ANSWER COULD LIE IN THE HABITABLE ZONE

The habitable zone is the region around a star where the average temperature on a planet allows for liquid water, according to Universe Today. However, the concept is based off of the Earth and focused around the range at which worlds similar to Earth could exist. While we are lucky at the moment to lie within the sun’s habitable zone, future generations might not be so lucky. Since stars go through growth and decay as humans do, our sun will continue to grow warmer until our oceans boil away.

THE GOLDILOCKS ZONE ISN’T THE ONLY ANSWER

Although the habitable zone seems like an easy answer to explain why life on Earth is able to sustain itself, the goldilocks zone isn’t the only requirement for life; it also depends on the type of star in a solar system. The moon, for example, is an obvious example of this; it remains our companion without a chance for living life.

Scientists continue to search for the probability of life on Europa and Enceladus, way outside of the sun’s habitable zone. We are lucky to have our Sun because it’s neither too big to harm us with deadly solar flares nor too dim, like red dwarfs, which cannot provide us with the warmth we need.

Gaining insight on what makes Earth different from its neighboring planets could help us understand the likelihood of finding Earth-like worlds in orbit around other stars. According to the 3rd edition of Life in the Universe by Jeffrey Bennett and Seth Shostak, other stars also have their own habitable zones, meaning distances at which a world similar in size to Earth, and with a similar atmosphere, would be habitable. The sizes of these habitable zones, however, are different for varying type of stars.

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We Are Lucky to Live in The Habitable Zone

Fans of #StarWars, you"ll love this real life #Tattooine discovery. - http://clapway.com/2015/08/12/real-life-tatooine-astronomers-discover-earth-like-planet-orbiting-two-suns-235/

With the recent announcement that the world’s superpowers are about to make Star Wars a reality by looking to space as the next battlefield, it’s only fitting that right around the same time, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has announced the discovery of a real life Tatooine, or at least a planet that resembles its fictional counterpart from Star Wars.

A Timely Discovery

The exoplanet known as Kepler-453b is what is known as a circumbinary planet. A circumbinary planet is a planet that orbits two stars, and Kepler-453b is the tenth such planet discovered so far. It is a timely discovery not only because it was discovered at around the same time that news broke out of the world’s superpowers looking to make Star Wars a reality by waging war in space, but also because the real life Tatooine was discovered by chance in a classic case of being in the right place at the right time.

The astronomers who made the discovery said that the real life Tatooine’s transits are only visible 9 percent of the time because the tilt of the planet’s orbit changes so quickly. They explained that they were lucky that they were able to detect the planet, because transits are usually not visible from Earth.

San Francisco State University’s Stephen Kane, a member of the team that discovered Kepler-453b, said that if they had been looking at the area that the alien world was discovered in any earlier or any later, they would most likely have missed it and would have assumed that there was no planet in that area. He explained that this meant there could be many more real life Tatooine planets out there that they had just missed because they weren’t looking at it within the right time frame. If the scientists on the Kepler team had missed the detection of Kepler-453b this time around, the next chance they would have gotten to discover the alien world would be in the year 2066.

A Real Life Tatooine in the Habitable Zone

Kane also said that the planet was discovered to be within the habitable zone of its stars, which makes this discovery even more important. This finding is significant because alien worlds within the habitable zone of their parent stars are potential places where life could thrive. The “habitable zone” is the area around a star (or in this case, the stars) that possesses the right conditions from which life could potentially spring forth.

If this planet is much older than Earth, that could mean that this alien world is just as full of life as our own home planet is. However, the scientists who discovered it measured the planet to be about 6.2 times bigger than Earth, or about 60 percent bigger than Neptune, which means that it could actually be a gas giant instead of a rocky planet. If that ends up being the case, it is unlikely that this particular real life Tatooine would be inhabited by extraterrestrial life.

The discovery is explained in full detail in an article published in the Astrophysical Journal, and is to be announced in Honolulu at the International Astronomical Union meeting by San Diego State University’s Professor William Welsh.

When Science Fiction Becomes Reality

This is but the latest in several announcements that have sci-fi aficionados everywhere excited at the notion of science fiction becoming a reality. With the death of the universe looming over our heads, and the potential for war to break out in space, the discovery of a real life Tatooine is welcome news for those who have dreamed of the day when Star Wars becomes a reality.

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Real Life Tatooine? Astronomers Discover Earth-Like Planet Orbiting Two Suns

Watch #NASA unveil news of a #AnotherEarth #LIVE --today. - http://clapway.com/2015/07/23/is-there-another-earth-nasa-live-stream-announcement-of-new-planet-112/

The whole world will be watching a live stream conference as NASA reveals their findings about a potential new planet that is similar to our own today, Thursday July 23 at Noon EDT.

NASA Will Reveal Findings on New Planet Similar to Ours

NASA has big plans today as they are setting up a news conference regarding the newest discovery from the Kepler Space Telescope. Launched in 2009, the Kepler mission is devoted to finding planets within what scientists explain as the “habitable zone,” but to what the average space cadet can call the Goldilocks Zone.

Space enthusiasts are abuzz with gossip that the US space agency will be announcing a monumental find: a new earth-like planet in the Milky Way’s Goldilocks Zone that may be able to support life.

What is perhaps just as exciting as the new find is viewers can tune in LIVE as NASA streams the conference, uncovering what may be the most newsworthy astronomical discovery of the past decade.

Why the Goldilocks Zone is Important for New Earth-like Planets

All planets, by definition, must revolve around a star. If the planet is too close, it will be too hot for water to exist. Yet, if too far away, it will be too frigid for water to stay liquid. Just like in the popular children’s story Goldilocks, the conditions must be just right for a planet to support liquid water, which in turn would sustain the life that we know of.

However, the keywords in that previous sentence are “that we know of” because recent efforts proposed by NASA are interested in finding alien life.

Kepler Hunts for Exoplanets Like Earth That Can Sustain Life

Since launching only six short years ago, the Kepler telescope has been a huge success having discovered 1,028 planets and 4,661 candidate planets. Most of these exoplanets are giant, gaseous bodies similar to Saturn and Jupiter.

Only 11 planets qualify as being in the habitable, Goldilocks Zone with a size much smaller than the gas giants and relatively similar to Earth.

In a news update on the live stream page, NASA has all but spelled out that brink of the discovery: “Today, and thousands of discoveries later, astronomers are on the cusp of finding something people have dreamed about for thousands of years — another Earth.”

For most Internet theorists, even without watching the livestream today, that one sentence alone has changed the idea of a new planet that can sustain life from mere potential to definite reality.

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Is There Another Earth? NASA Live Stream Announcement of New Planet