300 Million Habitable Planets, so Why Only Earth Has Life

the planet races through space its orbit is unstable like a pool ball gliding across the table looking for a target to collide into only this ball is the size of mars and it's going 9 000 miles per hour boom it crashes into another planet this mars-sized object was called thea and what it smashed into was earth the impact released 100 million times more energy than the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs the planetary collision threw tons of solid material from both objects out into space but only one of the bodies survived thea was obliterated and then swallowed entirely by early earth but that debris didn't go flying endlessly into the cosmic void no something crucial happened all those solid chunks gathered into a cloud gravity squished it together pressing more and more and in the end our moon was born so goes the theory at the time of the impact the solar system was just forming and this rendezvous of epic proportions probably wouldn't have happened if it worked for a newly formed jupiter throwing theia off its orbit and straight into earth our young planet withstood the blow time passed earth evolved its surface will become unrecognizable over the next 4.5 billion years it's hard for the human mind to understand this vast amount of time so we'll squeeze it all into one day if midnight is when earth first formed from gas and dust that remained after the sun's creation the next four hours show a lifeless planet red hot covered in lava constantly bombarded by asteroids and as you know by now even a whole other planet yet life finds a way the first cells appear it's 4am on the clock at 208 pm we see the first single-celled organisms form it's not until 8 28 pm that sea plants appear 20 minutes later what's this jellyfish after them the planet flourishes with different fish reptiles insects the forest grow at 10 30 p.m between 10 56 and 11 40 dinosaurs roamed the earth the giant lizards ruled our planet for less than one hour a minute before the dinosaurs extinction at 11 39 pm the first mammals begin to run around the planet at 11 58 and 43 seconds humans appear in the cosmic scale of things we've only ruled this planet for one minute and 17 seconds so here's the main question baffling scientists why didn't life on earth ever stop it had every chance to cease why didn't our planet become like venus or mars they both once had an atmosphere in oceans today they're lifeless deserts forget about complex scientific concepts and theories of the universe's structure our little rock and all its inhabitants are just incredibly lucky professor toby tyrell at the university of southampton used computer programs and climate simulations to solve the puzzle of why asteroid collisions in ice ages didn't turn our little rock into a lifeless wasteland the research team took not 10 100 or 1 000 virtual planets similar to earth they used 100 000 for the experiment and every single one of those one hundred thousand were simulated a hundred times they exposed these virtual planets to different phenomena they were bombarded by asteroids frozen exposed to epic eruptions of super volcanoes that blackened the skies and blocked the surface from the sun's rays just 9 or 8 700 of them were successful one time in 100 simulations of that group 4 500 planets remain inhabited 10 times only on one planet out of 100 000 life didn't stop all 100 times if life is a lottery earth got extremely lucky in 2009 the unique kepler telescope was launched into space its task search one patch of the night sky or 150 000 stars for rocky earth-like planets over nine years in service it ended up surveying more than 500 000 stars in all that time with all those observations over nearly a decade kepler discovered 2 600 possible earth-like planets the weird thing is most of them are a type you can't find in our own solar system there's something between the size of earth and neptune but back to the real earth if you go far from the city and look up at the sky you'll see an ocean of stars if you're lucky and it's a clear night with an unaided eye you could count a maximum of 2 500 points of light yet there are at least 100 billion stars in the milky way some estimates put the numbers of stars in the milky way up to 400 billion so where's this giant range coming from well counting stars isn't exactly an easy job scientists obviously don't number each one individually 1 2 3 and so on you know how long it takes to count just 1 billion over 100 years now multiply that by 400. instead they look at small patches of space and use some complex scientific formulas to make educated guesses of how many stars there are in total you can do a similar experiment yourself imagine a bucket filled with 10 pounds of rock sand soil and other items your job understand how many rocks are in that mix we'll count only those rocks that are visible to us from above get a rough estimate of their volume and weight what percentage of the total we can see and with some calculation you can get a number is it exact nah why because you can't know if the rocks in the bucket are spread evenly throughout or if they're all about the same size throughout what if the ones at the bottom if there are any are bigger or smaller than your sample view they could have completely different weights and volumes that bucket is our milky way galaxy and the rocks you are counting are stars the point scientists can't know for sure how many stars there really are maybe 100 billion or perhaps four times that of those four billion are like our sign with our own galaxy the most accepted estimate for planets that could potentially support life is 300 million though as the tradition of scientific inexactness goes that number could be up to 5 billion or more either way lots of real estate to choose from and that's just the milky way but get this it's just one of 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe the most recent research puts that number 10 times higher something like trillions of galaxies in space and we've only studied less than 10 percent of them as for how many stars there are in the universe scientists put it at one septillion that's one followed by 24 zeros again it's all estimates because we can't know for sure so far one thing is clear our earth is the only place in the universe that we know of where there's life and this planet has done everything it can to change that over the past 540 million years more than 20 major extinction events have occurred the last one was 66 million years ago yep it was the one that took out the dinosaurs and 75 of all life on this planet for that matter an object seven miles across in diameter smashed into our planet it was going 120 times faster than the fastest car today over 900 thousand miles all around the impact site everything caught fire a huge tsunami swept across the world's oceans billions of tons of dust and sulfur rose into the sky and blocked the sun's warm rays a global cooling came to earth a little over 200 million years ago there was a lesser-known extinction event that wiped out half of all life on the planet most likely volcanoes or an asteroid strike are to blame other theories say the movement of tectonic plates triggered another ice age at that time huge crocodiles ruled the earth they disappeared and new animals entered the arena of history dinosaurs but the worst this planet has ever seen was the permian triassic event about 250 million years ago eighty percent of marine life seventy percent of land animals and plants all gone volcanoes spewed out a colossal amount of lava where modern-day siberia is but it affected the entire planet around 445 million years ago the dominant life form on our planet was marine invertebrates there was only one continent gondwana and plants were just starting to flourish on land but something happened that took out 75 to 85 percent of all living organisms it could have been an ice age rising temperatures or a more daring theory some think it could have been a huge star exploding 6 000 light years from earth it launched a jet like gamma ray burst that ripped across space and poor little earth happened to be in its path it burned off the ozone layer instantly yeah we kind of need that thing to protect us case in point no matter how much this planet or even the universe tries to wipe out life on earth which is here in the first place from unbelievable odds life always finds a way [Music] foreign

Channel: BRIGHT SIDE

Views: 153,969

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Keywords: bright side, brightside, habitable planets 2021, habitable planets in our solar system, habitable planets in the universe, habitable planets in the milky way, habitable planets like earth, colonization of outer space, facts about space, colonization of mars, future of earth, colonization of other planets, super earth planet, future habitable planets, life on other planets, why only earth has life, life on mars, life on venus, life on jupiter, life on saturn, life on neptune

Id: qO8HFjqi9EQ

Length: 10min 55sec (655 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 03 2021