We know that there are billions upon billions of stars in the universe, most of those stars with planets orbiting them, and most of those planets with moons orbiting them. Exoplanets, like Jupiter and Neptune, are large, hostile places for life. Those large planets may also have large moons and it is the moons—not the planets, that could be a common home for life.
A moon would have to be around the size of Earth or bigger to maintain water and an atmosphere for longer than a few million years. Astronomers believe that moons for the same way that planets do, gradually coming together and forming out of a spinning disk or gas, ice, and dust. Computer simulations struggle to assemble a moon bigger than Jupiter’s largest moon in our solar system, Ganymede. According to a study, a moon would need to be five times that large in order to maintain a permanent atmosphere. But nature has found ways to make moons in different ways, with moons being formed from enormous collisions with its planet. In binary-exchange reactions, a giant planet pair captures these pairs and captures one in orbit and leaves one out in space.
Moons large enough to hold onto an atmosphere should be visible from satellites. The smallest planet that the Kepler Satellite has found is a planet slightly smaller than our moon. Astronomers say that if they can find moon sized planets, they should be able to find planet-sized moons. If astronomers can manage to pin down a planet-moon systems orbital configuration through timing effects, they can establish the weight of the systems moon, planet, and star. Such exomoons could be a haven for life, provided that the moon is large enough to hold an atmosphere.
Scientist don’t expect a gas giant planet like Jupiter to hold much life, but if a planet like Jupiter has large enough moons, the moon just might. Those moons would have to be big enough or planet-sized, to hold onto an atmosphere for more than a few million years. Different methods of moon formations can lead to moons of vastly different sizes. When Earth was formed, it is believed to be struck by a Mars-sized object. The result of that is leftover rock and iron that over time, cooled and turned into our moon. In the same scenario but with two same sized object colliding, it could result with a moon the same size as a planet.
Astronomers are searching for rocky moons that may circle distant exoplanets. These moons might be detectable using existing data, but their presence would impact such a small signal that massive amounts of processing power would be required to find them.
Do you think that there is life somewhere else in the universe?
Do you think that humans could manage to restart on another planet or moon?
Do you think that life once existed somewhere else in our solar system?
What studies have been done on Jupiter’s moon, Europa?
For me, this article was very fun to read. I really enjoy thinking about this kind of thing. I was watching TV once and i saw a show that was on a topic similar to this one. on it, they said that since Uranus is covered in ice, that maybe there could be bacteria-size life living in the ice. And yes, I too would agree that there could possibly be life somewhere else. and since these places are so many light years away, I believe that there is most likely life there, but we just wont be able to find that out until that many light years have passed. similar to the way we see intergalactic explosions that happened millions of light years ago. http://www.haikudeck.com/all-about-uranus-education-presentation-CyzT523tOy
I think that there is a good chance that there could be other life on moons. I think that any life, not as “sophisticated” as ours, would be awesome to see. I think that with all of the stars and moons and how big our universe is that it would be weird if there wasn’t other life. How could we be alone?? Scientists have found another planet and it is in the “habitual zone.” There could be liquid water and even have water on their moons. If life could survive there it would need strong plate tectonics and many other things essential for life. Oxygen of course. I found this at
http://www.reasons.org/articles/is-life-possible-on-a-moon
This topic was really interesting. I did some looking into for your question about humans managing to survive and thrive on a new planet. In the article I found, it says that the closest planets that could most likely sustain human life are over 1,200 light years away and possibly covered in oceans. If we even managed to make it to those planets, who knows what we would find. Maybe there’d be things already living there.
Here’s the article I found: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/science/space/2-new-planets-are-most-earth-like-yet-scientists-say.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
I learned that the moon would have to be around the size of Earth to maintain water and an atmosphere for longer than a million years. I think that there is a possibility that there is other life somewhere because space is huge. I think that eventually we could live on another planet. Yes, I believe that there was or is life somewhere else. Here is a link that you can find more information http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/onlinestuff/snot/will_we_live_on_the_moon_and_on_other_planets.aspx.