What if Alpha Centauri has no planets?

[amazingorange]

No place for the bible, eh? I think that if more scientists read the bible, a great deal of time and money would be saved instead of working on obvious dead ends in science. The bible seems to have a place in every aspect of our lives.

 

[Wodan]

No place for the bible, eh? I think that if more scientists read the bible, a great deal of time and money would be saved instead of working on obvious dead ends in science. The bible seems to have a place in every aspect of our lives.

I fully support the idea that scientists could benefit from religious studies.

The idea that the Bible can tell us what is "impossible" and therefore a waste of time, to me, is the same thing you've been saying. Yet, you contradicted yourself, seemingly, the other day, when you said, "You guys have made me do some research and have I have been led to some interesting conclusions and learned some new things that actually changed my outlook on the universe." So... did you change your outlook, or not?

I think Magma had it right when he responded, "That is a narrow vision of God, and makes him small."

I don't think man can limit god. The Bible is either directly man's interpretation (because men wrote it = sitz im leben) or else is it literally divine possession. Either way, man interprets it when he tries to put it into context of his life and into application. Trying to take it too literally leads to attitudes such as you're saying.

I think the Bible, and all religious instructions, are guides, not textbooks. They provide generalities, not specifics. In most cases, they provide ethical guidance and aren't even remotely scientific in nature. Trying to take them too literally just gets us all into trouble. Man has had more dissent with his fellow man, even so far as killing and wars, over this literalistic interpretation that goes on, than all other causes put together.

That's all I'm going to say on this subject.

Anyway I think the jury is still out on non terrestrial life. To me, there's nothing in science or religion that says one way or the other. Regardless, there are definitely other planets, and it's not too hard to imagine they might be able to support terrestrial life. That alone makes all space research and exploration mankind is doing and will do, very worthwhile. Certainly not a waste of time by any means.

 

[reverend oats]

I just wanted to say that your post was really great, Wodan.

 

[Willem]

The bible seems to have a place in every aspect of our lives.

That's your opinion. And I don't really appreciate people using a public forum in order to preach. I respect your right to have a religious belief, kindly show the same respect towards people who don't have one. Or at least one that's different than yours. Faith is a personal issue, please keep it that way.

 

[Vladesch]

First I would be surprised if a 3 star system could have a planet

Scientific opinion on this matter has changed recently.

On the observational front, recent successes in astronomical searches for planets orbiting stars outside our solar system have found a number of examples of Jupiter-like gas giant planets orbiting in binary star systems with separation distances ranging from 12 to 1000 AU

http://209.85.175.104/search?q=cach...pha+centauri+planets&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=au

 

[GeoModder]

Mmm, if that article represents how planet formation evolves in binary star systems, there's more chance for 'terrestrial' planets several times more massive then Earth, thus still making them uninhabitable to humans.
Not that this wouldn't be interesting in itself. An ocean world twenty thousand kilometers in diameter in the habitable zone would most likely be a host to extra-terrestrial life.

 

[r_rolo1]

Scientific opinion on this matter has changed recently.
http://209.85.175.104/search?q=cach...pha+centauri+planets&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=au

The problem is that Alpha centauri system has 3 stars , not 2 ( ok, C is a red dwarf, but you can't discount it ). 3 centered star system simulated on computers had showed chaotic behaviour.....

 

[GeoModder]

Proxima Centauris is a fifth of a lightyear away from both other stars, and is perhaps only a bypasser. I haven't checked, but my guess is that those 3 centered star system simulations have the stars close to one another, relatively speaking.

 

[r_rolo1]

Yup, but even Mars -Earth interaction makes both orbits chaotic ( thank God that it is with a very small divergence factor... some thing like 1000 million years for 100% divergence ). You can't simply discount a star, even if a red dward and relatively far ....

 

[Oatse]

That's your opinion. And I don't really appreciate people using a public forum in order to preach. I respect your right to have a religious belief, kindly show the same respect towards people who don't have one. Or at least one that's different than yours. Faith is a personal issue, please keep it that way.

Noone ever says anything like this whenever someone in Off Topic starts yet another religion bashing topic. He should be entitled to his opinion and be allowed to express it openly just like them.

 

[GeoModder]

Yup, but even Mars -Earth interaction makes both orbits chaotic ( thank God that it is with a very small divergence factor... some thing like 1000 million years for 100% divergence ). You can't simply discount a star, even if a red dward and relatively far ....

Assumed that this is true, there's still the dominant effect of Alpha Centauri A and B, essentially mitigating Proxima's effect to close to nothing.

Or, put in terms of our star system, Jupiter can inflict a random factor on Mars' orbit quite a number of times before Earth could ever have an effect on Mars.

 

[r_rolo1]

Close to nothing != nothing , especially in chaotic systems. But in the essential you have a point: probably a rocky planet orbiting Alpha Centauri A or B could have a quasi stable orbit....

Not sure if it would look like Earth , though... technically Venus is in the habitable zone as well, but ( it looks like it ) a massive planet-wide eruption ( there are patches of the planet that look to had been melted from below ) liberated so much greenhouse gases that the planet got hot enough for the carbonates start dissociating thermically, liberating even more greehouse gases... and we have a 95 atm planet with a temperature of 450 ºC.....

 

[frekk]

Of the 8 planets in our system, 3 (Venus, Earth, Mars) were at one time habitable. Of those, only Earth is habitable now.

Mars was never habitable. I hate to break this to all the dreamers ... but Mars has no magnetic core, thus no van Allen belts, thus it is directly exposed to the solar wind, thus it is ... and always has been, and always will be ... utterly hostile to life. Just the regular solar wind would be enough to scrub the surface of all but the hardiest life, and a coronal mass ejection would destroy anything hardy enough to survive that. And no amount of terraforming will ever change it.

What people keep forgetting about Earth is that it has a very unique feature: a very powerful, rotating magnetic dynamo at its core.

Think NASA hasn't been prioritizing the search for life very highly? They haven't! And with good reason, they know damn well there's nothing to find. But it's not like they aren't going to play up the possibility anyway, makes for good funding.

 

[r_rolo1]

Like you said Mars has no Van Allen belts.... until we make a serious geological study in Mars ( I mean with Human geologists browsing all planet, not robots with some miles of authonomy ) we simply can't say if Mars ever had or not a strong magnetical field.

And the normal Solar wind is not enough to clean high grade life... Life has no problem in living in the Poles, where the Van allen belts funnel all the high energy solar wind charged particles ( Aurora borealis ring a bell? ). Not even flares had sterilized the poles of Planet Earth......

To end: don't say that earth has a "a very powerful, rotating magnetic dynamo at its core" . That is virtually the only thing that we know it is not true about Earth's mag field: earth core can't act like a dynamo, because as far as we know ( sismological data ) , the earth's core is Solid, and because of that , it can't act like a dynamo

 

[frekk]

To end: don't say that earth has a "a very powerful, rotating magnetic dynamo at its core" . That is virtually the only thing that we know it is not true about Earth's mag field: earth core can't act like a dynamo, because as far as we know ( sismological data ) , the earth's core is Solid, and because of that , it can't act like a dynamo

http://www.phy6.org/earthmag/dynamos2.htm

http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/glossary/dynamo_effect.html

Earth's core isn't solid - only the inner core, not the outer core. The outer core is liquid and sitting at its middle is the solid inner core, basically suspended in a whirlpool. The fact of its suspension in a liquid medium (one subject to much movement, as well) is what allows it to rotate separate from the usual rotation of the earth, and thus act as a dynamo.

And the normal Solar wind is not enough to clean high grade life... Life has no problem in living in the Poles, where the Van allen belts funnel all the high energy solar wind charged particles ( Aurora borealis ring a bell? ). Not even flares had sterilized the poles of Planet Earth......

Aurora borealis doesn't happen because the entire solar wind is being funneled into the poles. A small fragment of the particles during a flare will penetrate the "tail" of the belts, behind the earth, and these are redirected to the poles, but it is only a very small fraction of the full solar wind. Most of it passes off into space at the bow shock, even during the most powerful flares and ejections.

Without the Van Allen belts, the surface would be directly blasted with plasma.

 

[r_rolo1]

That is not exactly like you posted. No computer simulation so far has been able of making a magnetic field to appear from a object like it is proposed for Earth..... as your link admits:

Before mathematicians tackle a complex problem, they try out simple solutions (joke about a mathematician's model of milk production: "Assume a spherical cow of radius R, uniformly filled with milk... "). No such luck here: early in the game, in 1934, Thomas G. Cowling in England proved that any self-sustaining dynamo in the Earth's core cannot have an axis of symmetry.

Yeah , I know that the more modern stuff indicates that earth mag field may be some kind of residual effect created by the Earth's rotation, but that is not a pure dynamo effect.

 

[Willem]

Noone ever says anything like this whenever someone in Off Topic starts yet another religion bashing topic. He should be entitled to his opinion and be allowed to express it openly just like them.

This is not Off Topic, this is a general game forum where people of all faiths from all over the world come to relate about game issues, or topics related. The preaching of any particular faith does not belong here.

 

[Willem]

Yeah , I know that the more modern stuff indicates that earth mag field may be some kind of residual effect created by the Earth's rotation, but that is not a pure dynamo effect.

It's my understanding that the Earth has a magnetic field because we have the Moon's gravity affecting the core, and creating that dynamo effect you're speaking off. It's also the reason why we still have a liquid core and the other planets don't. It's never had the chance to cool and solidify since it's always being pulled in various directions due to the Moon's gravity.

 

[frekk]

That is not exactly like you posted. No computer simulation so far has been able of making a magnetic field to appear from a object like it is proposed for Earth..... as your link admits

Heh, keep reading. Wait til you get to the part about Faraday. The homopolar dynamo effect is very well known and very simple to demonstrate (homopolar motors are all the rage on Youtube for some reason, if you want to see one in action)

It's true that there is no axis of symmetry, but it's not true that there is no dynamo effect. It just means that the effect is different than the simple model they proposed.

Or a better explanation:

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/magnetic/MagEarth.html

As far as the computer simulations, you're misreading what the article said. It said that computer simulations currently do not perfectly match with the observations about Earth's magnetic field, ie the values are off, not that the effect isn't modelled at all. That's just a limitation of computing power - they have to account for fluid motions in an incredible volume of liquid, much larger than, say, the atmosphere - and they haven't built a computer that can predict the weather yet. There's alot of variables to account for.

Yeah , I know that the more modern stuff indicates that earth mag field may be some kind of residual effect created by the Earth's rotation, but that is not a pure dynamo effect.

It has to do with the fluid motions of the core within the Earth and friction between the layers to provide a current, coupled with the conductive nature of solid iron, moving across solar magnetic field lines. The Earth simply rotating is just a relative matter, it doesn't make any real difference. If the earth was in some space where there were no other bodies, there would be no magnetic field, no matter how much it rotated. Or if it was just a solid uniform mass, even made of solid iron, there would be no field.

 

[NintendoTogepi]

This thread has nothing to do with Civilization and hasn't for several pages...

Anyway, I think Mars did have life at one point. Not Venus, though.