Planetary Formation Sim Suggests Many Water Worlds

StefanJ writes "Researchers at the University of Washington -- supported by the NASA's Astrobiology Institute, its Planetary Atmospheres program, and Intel -- have come up with a new simulation of planetary formation that suggests that not only are terrestrial planets (small, rocky worlds, as opposed to gas giants) are common, but that water worlds (the subset of terrestrials that have sufficient water to support Life As We Know It) may be plentiful as well. A key factor as to how 'wet' a planetary system's terrestrial worlds get: The eccentricity of the orbits of the system's jovian worlds. It will be a while before we have telescopes good enough to actually see terrestrial planets and spec out their atmospheric composition, allowing us to reality-check these simulations. But it's still cool to play with sims like this. I can't wait for the home version! (Emergency backup link to Science Daily article based on the press release.)"

Comments

"using" this sim

[RevAaron]

you love sims like this? I find it pretty doubtful you've ever used a sim like this in any "home version." this isn't simfarm. it like doesn't have any snazzy openGL renderings of planets being born, one star system at a time, making a picture of the galaxy you can zoom around in by holding down the control- and meta-keys as modifiers of axis. It's a big and ugly number crunching beast that spits out some probabilities. fun, if you know what the numbers mean, but mostly worthless to an outsider.

though i suppose someone could write a GUI front end that just takes the probability matrix it spits out and generate a random solar system based on the numbers, along with total mass, etc etc. But I could do that now with some guesses at the numbers and it wouldn't be much different...

Re:"using" this sim

[Urkki]

Actually I believe it really simulates actual star system formation (44 different simulations, according to the article). It should be relatively easy to create snappy 3D animations of each of those 44 simulations you could zoom around to your heart's content.

Of course that still doesn't make a sim-style game since after initial parameters are set there's nothing to *do*, just let the simulation run and see how the system develops.

Hmm, sounds a lot like Stair and Truck Dismount games, so perhaps it'd still make a fun game after all ;)

Impossible to detect Earthlike planets?

[meadowreach]

From the article: "It currently is impossible to detect Earthlike planets around other stars."

As I am not overly familiar with astronomy, why is this the case?

Like islands in the ocean

[Jesrad]

Reading the article I can't help but think of all the stellar systems around as archipels of islands spread in a huge ocean. The other islands near ours might be inhabited, too ? That's one more reason to start sending "smoke signals". Or perhaps the current electromagnetic madness we emit permanently might suffice ?

Planetary Sim results I'd like to see...

[Baron_Yam]

I'd love to see a series of sims run on a modified Earth model - each sim run with only 1 parameter changed, and then examined to see what would happen to life as we know it, here on Earth.

For instance, play with the Earth's mass, water content, distance from the Sun, or mass of its satellite. It would be interesting to have an educated guess as to how much each of these values could differ from reality before Earth wouldn't be Earth anymore, and how things would change as we approached those limits.

I designed things like this for playing...

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

...the RPG Traveler as a kid. I've a hunch that my simulations were as accurate at these.

Adding to the

[Wardish]

This data just adds to the mystery of where are they. Fermi Paradox

By all that's reasonable, if life is common, and this data just increases that likelihood, then it's extremely likely that someone somewhere would have colonized the galaxy.

Of course there are only a few reasonable conclusions (reasonable as I see it anyway...)

1. We're the only "intelligent" life around. Meaning that life may be common but intelligence as we see it is such a long shot that we are the only or the first.

2. We're the only life around. Meaning that a unique combination of events combined to produce life on this planet.

3. We're not the only intelligent life but the other's haven't reached this neck of the galaxy yet.

4. We're not the only intelligent life but we're off limits for whatever reason.

Feel free to juggle the odds or toss in new ones...

Re:Adding to the

[Urkki]

My favourite is intelligence inevitably wiping itself out before they can expand to other star systems. Something like, there's some really nifty way of launching interstellar ships using the stars energy output or tapping energy from parallel universe or something, but actually using it will unexpectedly cause the star go nova, wiping everyone out. Or maybe in 10 years someone discovers a way to make artifical neutron stars, then two of them escape, collide at the center of earth and collapse into a black hole blowing earth apart.

Anyway, I have no trouble believing that we could be alone in our galaxy (for whatever reason, I can imagine many reasons why intelligent life would be very very rare), so I don't see a paradox here really. Perhpas after (if ever) we have lot of real data, like having visited a 100 other star systems, and everything then suggests that intelligence should be abundant but we've found no sign of it other than ourselves, then I'd say it's a paradox. But with our current data, talking about a paradox is a bit of sensationalism.