Discovery shows how unique Earth is amongst Creation

By Marshall Connolly (Catholic Online)
10/17/2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

It seems there's no place like home, anywhere.

Scientists are discovering that planets appear to be a normal phenomenon around stars, however, they are also noticing that their distances are typically much closer than those in our solar system. The implication is that while planets are normal, habitable systems like ours may not be.

This graphic shows how close the planets of KOI-500 orbit their parent star.

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LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Recent evidence for this notion is being delivered by the Kepler Space Observatory. The space telescope has detected some 2,300 planets orbiting nearby stars by measuring the reduction in light reaching Earth as planets pass in front of the stars.
The most recently announced discovery is of a system which has five rocky planets all larger than the Earth, orbiting their parent star so close that their orbits range from one day to 9.5 days.

The planets orbit the star KOI-500, in the constellation Lyra. These planets orbit their parent star so closely, it's difficult to imagine any hope of life.

Farther out from the star, there are 4 larger planets, probably gas giants that also orbit relatively close to KOI-500.

What intrigues scientists the most is the knowledge that the planets had to have formed farther from the star, then as a result of gravitational interactions, their orbits shrank.

In fact, astronomers are finding many systems with planets too close for liquid water to exist, which scientists consider a prerequisite for life.

So while planets may be common, habitable worlds may prove decidedly uncommon.

Once again, science demonstrates just how miraculous life on Earth happens to be.

Researchers also think our solar system's planets shifted their orbits during their formation. Evidence for this includes periods of planetary bombardment between 4.1 billion to 3.8 billion years ago.

This was before any life arose on Earth, taking place just after the Earth's surface cooled from a molten mass as a result of its formation. This bombardment is the most likely reason why Earth is covered in water - comets striking the Earth after the planet's formation remain the best scientific explanation for how water arrived on the planet.

The miraculous nature of the Solar System and the fact that despite locating thousands of other planets, yet none with likely habitable worlds, suggests that life, particularly intelligent life may be more rare in the universe than some have predicted.

There is little question that Earth, and the life upon it, remains unique amongst all Creation.

� 2012, Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.

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Pope Benedict XVI's Prayer Intentions for January 2013
General Intention: The Faith of Christians. That in this Year of Faith Christians may deepen their knowledge of the mystery of Christ and witness joyfully to the gift of faith in him.
Missionary Intention: Middle Eastern Christians. That the Christian communities of the Middle East, often discriminated against, may receive from the Holy Spirit the strength of fidelity and perseverance.

Keywords: Astronomy, planets, Kepler, KOI-500

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1 - 6 of 6 Comments

Judy Claar
7 months ago
Marshall Connolly: Interesting article.

Bob Azour: Interesting response.

Our brother's keeper: Good post.

Sunday Blessings...Peace on earth..."God Bless Us Everyone".
Our brothers keeper
7 months ago
Who cares,let their be Peace on Earth. With so little evidence of life anywhere else,maybe we should all just learn to love an appreciate each other.
Bob Azour
7 months ago
Life supporting planets are, statistically speaking, not uncommon. Our ability to peer into deep space is in its infancy so the fact that we don’t know about life supporting planets doesn’t mean there are none or that they are uncommon. Doubting God’s ability create other life supporting planets in the universe is very unwise.
Have you ever considered that the biblical Garden of Eden may be another planet??
Let’s not repeat the mistakes of our Catholic forefathers who proclaimed with much conviction that Earth is at the center of the universe.
God Bless.
Bob
7 months ago
There have been four planets found in habitable zones. Two are tidally locked, but that would not preclude life.

Life may not even be unique to Earth in this solar system. Mars and Titan show some evidence for it (the behaviour of gases on each planet is suggestive.)

Jesus said that he has other flocks, and there is nothing in Catholic doctrine that requires us to believe Earth is alone in holding life. Indeed, the greater miracle would be a universe fine tuned to permit life all over!
John
7 months ago
I'd like to point out that the primary reason most of the earth-like exoplanets thus far discovered have been very close to their parent suns is that planets which are either massive or very close to their suns are far easier to spot, because the two most productive techniques of detecting planets in other star systems rely on occlusion (strongly affected by size) and orbital perturbation (affected by mass and orbital radius) of the parent stars. This does not necessarily imply that all, or even most, exoplanets are too hot to support life - it just means we haven't figured out a good way to find small planets relatively far away from their stars. That said, Earth-like planets do, at this point, appear to be fairly uncommon.
Red Scourge
7 months ago
This article is misleading. Anyone familiar with the Kepler mission would tell you that Kepler is SPECIFICALLY designed to locate planets which are either much larger than Earth, or much closer to it's star than Earth. It's resolution is simply not high enough to detect Earth-like planets. This does not mean that the Earth is particularly rare, nor does it mean the opposite, it simply means that the devices we are using to detect planets are not optimized to find ones like our own, and that the vast majority of planets which we start to detect will be unlike ours. Before Kepler, it was thought that most planets were gas giants. Thanks to Kepler, we now know that this is not the case.

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