MYSTERY OF LIFE: Why We Exist – Our Home, the Solar System | WELT Documentary

foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] system our Cosmic home is it something exceptional or just one planetary system among countless others star systems always form in the same way initially but once a gas planets have formed they can have a decisive influence on the way the system develops thereafter and the two gas giants Jupiter and Saturn substantially determined the course of our Solar System's Evolution too [Music] foreign [Music] we live in a solar system that's just perfect for us we have the perfect sun it will shine without any major fluctuations for around 10 billion years enough time to allow for biological life to develop we have the gas planets Jupiter and Saturn they protect us from asteroid impacts the Earth is perfect it has just the right size and is at just the right distance from the Sun so it isn't too hot or cold we have a large Moon which stabilizes the Earth's axis is this all just a coincidence or has it been specially made this way for us regardless our son is without doubt very special it's a so-called g-star only eight percent of all the stars out there are G Stars G indicates the spectral class of our sun yellow it belongs to the star class G25 also referred to as a yellow dwarf the sun is something very special it's our Giver of Life in terms of size however it's pretty average by astronomical standards there are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy alone and the majority of these have a planetary system [Music] a large number of the Stars we've been able to probably observe up to now have planets and that's most unexpected it seems to indicate that our solar system isn't anything exceptional but rather than normal our sun formed from Interstellar material primarily hydrogen left over from The Big Bang and the remnants of a supernova the explosion of a massive star it was the death of this star that triggered the birth of our solar system scientists estimate that the gas and dust cloud from such a supernova spawns roughly a thousand new star systems around 70 percent of these are binary or multiple star systems even systems like these can have planets like the binary star system Kepler 1647 which is 3700 light years away when you have a binary star and thus a triple system with a planet you always have a latent Dynamic instability because triple systems have a tendency to be unstable at some point one of the three bodies usually gets expelled but if the two stars are close together and the planet is a long way from them massive as in this case the system exhibits a Stern stability too so it's possible for it to remain stable for a long time [Music] the birthplace of our solar system was a cloud of interstellar material that collapsed hydrogen gas accumulated in the pre-stellar core density and pressure increased once the core temperature exceeded a few thousand degrees the hydrogen molecules split into two atoms and became ionized they lost their electron shell the enormous pressure caused the hydrogen atoms in the core to combine to form helium the start of nuclear fusion the sun is born Society is naturally always a bit of dust left over that doesn't end up in the start on and once everything's rotating and moving around quickly the surrounding dust gets spread out and forms a disc there's now a lot of rotational energy in this disc most of the mass is in the Sun but the kinetic energy of a system like this is now in the disk which orbits the Sun in the equatorial plane there are differences in density and temperature within this protoplanetary disk during the roughly 50 million years it takes for the sun to form material in this disk is accreting lumps of material so-called planetesimals develop these collide with one another and grow in size the bigger they get the more material they attract in this way planetesimals first grow to become protoplanets and then planets and the Earth is no exception the leftovers from this formation period Then orbit the Sun as asteroids minor and dwarf planets star systems always form in the same way but this doesn't mean that the size type and arrangement of the planets is always the same we're learning a great deal from studying planetary systems around other stars including about our own Origins we used to think we understood how things came about having studied other planetary systems we now know that things can turn out very differently the fact is we don't have one theory for all planets and never have stars have different masses and small low mass stars evolve more slowly than large massive stars the shock wave from a supernova gives rise to entire clusters of stars scientists suspect that our son's birth cluster contained several thousand stars some of which probably influenced the evolution of our planetary system such clusters become less and less dense with age they thin out today our solar system is in a region of low Stellar density [Music] our solar system like all other stars we're part of a so-called Galaxy this is our galaxy The Milky Way and where in the Milky Way are we roughly two-thirds out from the center in a partial arm called the Orion arm that's here and it's the perfect place for us to be this region is also referred to as a habitable zone why well if we were closer to the center of the Galaxy the star density is so great that every Supernova explosion wouldn't wipe out life on Earth further out there's less dust which means hardly any rocky planets like the Earth could form in other words the habitable zone is the perfect place for our Earth galaxies are typically collections of a few hundred billion stars planetary systems gas and dust clouds scientists suspect that there are over a trillion galaxies in the observable universe and our Milky Way is one of the oldest researchers estimate that the first stars in our galaxy formed just 800 million years after the big bang which would make the Milky Way almost 13 billion years old our solar system orbits the galactic center which is home to a supermassive black hole at a distance of roughly 27 000 light years and a speed of 700 000 kilometers per hour this is Sagittarius A star in 2022 astronomers used Event Horizon an array of radio telescopes to capture the very first image of this black hole around which the Earth our solar system and all other objects in the Milky Way revolve is an enormous mass at the center of this system the gravity of this enormous mass is such that it attracts everything around us and the entire structure is rotating too which means there's a vast amount of angular momentum in the system and that is why the stars orbit this Central Mass as it were it's like a whirlpool and at some point they'll get sucked in the picture scientists have built up of our galaxy is based on observations of the Stars our knowledge of physical forces and comparisons with other galaxies because we're not able to observe our galaxy from the outside [Music] when we look at look at me in the night sky clean winter we're looking at the outer edge in summer we're looking towards the center of the Milky Way and that's the brighter region where there are more stars because the Earth's axis is tilted the way it is we can observe different parts of the Milky Way uh from the Earth our galaxy appears to the naked eye as a light strip it meanders across the night sky like a Milky brush stroke hence the name which was coined in Antiquity Milky Way a collection of several hundred billion stars the large dark patches are clouds of interstellar gas and dust scientists are learning more and more about our Galactic home and it seems likely that somewhere in this Myriad of stars other life exists so we off keep to sleep how common is life in our galaxy we've recently made important progress in answering this question namely we now know that planets with the same mass and radius as the Earth are quite common in the Milky Way the laws of physics apply equally throughout the Universe but whether or not life always forms if the conditions are conducive is uncertain just because there's life in one place in the universe namely on Earth it doesn't automatically mean that there's life elsewhere in the universe I think as scientists we should be very wary about drawing such a conclusion you might say it's likely that this is the case but it could also be that the conditions that allowed life to originate here are so unique that they aren't found anywhere else in the universe having said that the basic prerequisites for life that is water carbon and energy seem to be present in so many places in the universe and by water I mean liquid water that they must be present everywhere throughout the Universe after the Andromeda galaxy our Milky Way is the second largest of 50 galaxies in the so-called local group the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy are approaching one another at a speed of roughly 430 000 kilometers per hour there is set to collide in three to four billion years this won't affect human beings though because the Earth will have long since become uninhabitable our solar system consists of eight planets the four outer ones Jupiter Saturn Uranus and Neptune are gas giants whereby the last two have a bit of ammonia and methane in addition to hydrogen which is why they're sometimes referred to as ice giants toward the center are the four rocky planets Rocky because they have a solid surface of these four Mercury and Mars are too small though so small that they don't have their own atmosphere not good for Life Earth and Venus are the perfect size although only the Earth is right in the middle of the so-called habitable zone the habitable zone is just the right distance from the Sun so that temperatures lie between zero and 50 degrees Celsius which is ideal for life Mercury orbits the Sun in just 88 days the innermost planet in the solar system is only a little larger than our moon and resembles it superficially too its surface is covered with impact craters and like the moon mercury has no atmosphere on October 20th 2018 the probe bepi Colombo was launched on a mission to Mercury the European Japanese space probe will take seven years to reach its destination [Music] scientists want to discover more about Mercury's geological past in order to better understand the origins of our solar system Colombo is tasked with finding out whether there is water ice in the craters at Mercury's poles and studying the composition of the planet in more detail because Mercury exhibits peculiarities that distinguish it from other rocky planets Mercury formed at around the same time as the other rocky planets Mars Venus and Earth but the structure of mercury is rather unique then Mercury is smaller than Mars but it is very dense for its size which means mercury has a very large pin that makes up roughly 80 of the planet's radius it's possible that early on in its life after it falls there was a massive collision and parts of the mentor were Stripped Away from the mountains Venus is almost the same size as the Earth which is why it's often described as our sister planet Venus is one of our two planetary neighbors and gets to within roughly 38 million kilometers of the Earth on its Journey around the Sun despite this Venus and Earth have little in common our neighbor rotates very slowly on its axis a day on Venus takes a little over 243 Earth days over it's enveloped by a dense layer of cloud for a long time we had no idea what its surface looked like up until the early 20th century some astronomers even thought that Venus could be inhabited similar in size and Mars to the Earth it's a bit closer to the summer there could possibly be humans and animals and plants there might be a little warmer than on Earth because of its tropical climate Etc but we now know from measurements that it's anything but that the atmosphere of Venus is extremely toxic it's dominated by carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid as well there are simulations that suggest that around 750 million years ago the climate on Venus was much water on the surface Venus is hot a runaway greenhouse effect has heated the surface of Venus to almost 500 degrees Celsius our neighbor is still interesting though NASA's Da Vinci Mission plans to land on Venus and during The Descent analyze the atmosphere in more detail the thought is that there could be a Zone not on the venusian surface but in the atmosphere where there's sufficient water and where very primitive life might have evolved our other immediate neighbor is Mars the planet that probably Sparks people's imagination the most next to the Earth Mars is the most studied planet in our solar system nonetheless it still holds many Secrets the red planet has a lot to offer the researchers it's geologically diverse and has an atmosphere albeit very thin Mars has water in the form of ice at the poles and possibly underground too which makes Mars especially interesting in the search for former or present day life within our solar system we see valleys deltas and channels that were carved out by water which means the Mars had liquid water on its surface at some time in its past and liquid water is a prerequisite for life or at least for Life as We Know It or Not can our Solar System's Ford terrestrial planets are fairly close together and are small compared to the gas giants from a cosmic perspective our Earth is a despite this it's the only known Celestial body that supports life is perfect of course but it has certain prerequisites that make it perfect and one of them is the move which stabilizes a lot of things on earth and ensures for example that the water moves back and forth another major factor is plate tectonics it has consequences that we don't like very much such as volcanism and earthquakes but it also affects the Earth as a whole this means the planet is able to generate a magnetic field for instance and it has a relatively dense atmosphere for us the Earth sets the standard when it comes to higher forms of life it offers the ideal conditions for the creation and evolution of diverse life forms several thousand exoplanets have been discovered so far but none with comparable attributes [Music] every astronomer is looking for earth-like planets but what does that actually mean not much really it just means terrestrial planet that is one with a solid surface that's not really what we're looking for we're looking for planets that can support life and they're actually pretty rare it's thought that only one in a thousand to ten thousand stars has such a habitable planet which we refer to as Earth analog planets despite this in a galaxy the size of the Milky Way which contains roughly a hundred billion stars there could be one to ten million Earth analog planets which would make the average distance between them roughly 30 light years is there life beyond Earth in light of the vast number of stars with planetary systems in the universe the answer is most likely yes including in our galaxy and perhaps even in our solar system these scientists are convinced that extraterrestrial life will be discovered before the end of this century [Music] of course it depends on what kind of life we expect to find if you were to ask will we find intelligent humanoid creatures then I would say given the list of prerequisites and the probability of Life developing somewhere I'd say we're probably the only ones in our galaxy at the moment if you were to say a few single-celled organisms or algae would do it we don't have to find large creatures big fish whales Etc small microscopic life forms would suffice if you accept that you could presumably find several thousand planets in our galaxy that meet the necessary criteria finding a second Earth in the vastness of space is one of the astronomers primary goals even if it turns out that Evolution as it occurred on Earth is just an incredible Cosmic accident [Music] at any rate the building blocks of life are present throughout the Universe but scientists have yet to find them in the right combination and environment the Kepler space telescope was designed specifically to search for alien planets Kepler identified over 2 600 exoplanets during its 10-year mission and one of its findings earth-like planets are not that rare as Kepler has discovered three important things first planets with small masses or rather small radio fomal command and giant planets they're so common in fact that on average every Star has at least one such planets it's also discovered the planets don't particularly like being alone they mostly exist within planetary systems and it discovered something else too there are types of planets that we don't find in our solar system terrestrial planets several Earth radii in size which we refer to as super Earths we don't have them in our solar system and they have new and interesting properties researchers have strict criteria for what counts as an Earth-like planet the Central Star must be similar to our sun and the planet must be in the habitable zone the astronomers draw on data from the European space probe Gaia in their search Gaia is measuring the position motion and brightness of nearly 2 billion celestial objects is basically mapping out our galaxy Gauss and others introduced geography into our world and since then we've precisely surveyed the surface of the land and Gaia is doing the same thing for the Milky Way determining the position and motion of nearly all the stars in our galaxy and has made some very exciting discoveries in the process for example it's discovered so-called Stellar strings which enter the Milky Way from the outer region the Halo possibly from neighboring galaxies and they reveal that we're interacting with our neighboring galaxies this is an exciting Discovery each time a new planet is discovered we rely on a Gaia to tell us how far away it is so we can determine its total Luminosity thanks to Gaia we have precise data for the first time it really is a revolution it's like geodesy of the milky ways the Gaia data are a vast Treasure Trove for modern astronomy scientists use them to create a three-dimensional map of argylactic surroundings the measurements made by the space Observatory form the basis for a comprehensive star catalog containing detailed information on all the celestial bodies surveyed Gaia provides us with an unprecedented insight into the structure of the Milky Way and the properties of stars and their planetary systems the search for earth-like planets is simultaneously the search for answers to humankind's biggest questions where do we come from and are we alone discovering other worlds detecting early signs of life and understanding the mechanisms behind it are what drives the researchers but it's important to Define exactly what we mean by life [Music] in all ancient Advanced civilizations primitive States early complex societies and this was a complex early Bronze Age but it then took billions of years for a multicellular organisms to evolve so there seems to be a massive difference between single cell and multicellular organisms it obviously requires very stable conditions for a very long period of time for multicellular life to develop consequently it could mean that the universe is full of single-celled organisms but perhaps devoid of multicellular life the discovery of Planet koi 456.04 proves that there are solar systems out there similar to our own a twin earth in the habitable zone of its star its star kepler-160 resembles our sun in terms of size and mass too much a place that would certainly be worth taking a closer look at but unfortunately it's over 3 000 light years away that makes things rather difficult we'd really like it to be 100 times closer so we could assess the situation better but it's nonetheless interesting that there are apparently Earth-like planets out there what the surface looks like whether there's water and what the atmosphere is made of is another question the search for a planetary system similar to our solar system continues finding a carbon copy of the Earth Sun System would be like winning the lottery but even then the planet would have to have a whole host of other properties in order for it to be conducive to life and scientists still don't know how life originated on Earth there are many many criteria that constitute a good Planet a scientist once said that good planets are very hard to come by um this has to do with the fact that we're only beginning to understand all the requirements that have to be met for life to exist our Earth has everything necessary for life to develop and survive it has the right size and is at the perfect distance from its star plus it has a magnetic field and a stabilizing Moon the Earth has an atmosphere and there's liquid water on its surface and our sun has just the right size and temperature in order to give rise to life a planet has to have gone through a complex developmental process subjected to during its early life and what were the consequences was the planet able to generate a magnetic field that protects the atmosphere and surface from cosmic radiation for example all these aspects must come together perfectly in order to create the conditions conducive to life on its surface the Earth is able to hold on to an atmosphere thanks to its gravity unlike Mars which has too little Mass this atmosphere is not only required for life on land but plays a major role in regulating the temperature the energy in the interior of the Earth causes locked up water and carbon to be released via magma a kind of recycling without which life on Earth presumably would have died out long ago [Music] two-thirds of the earth's surface is covered by oceans the largest ecosystems on our planet the world's oceans generate about 70 percent of the oxygen in our atmosphere and they're a source of food energy and raw materials in addition our Earth has an unusually large Moon presumably created as the result of a collision with a planetoid shortly after our planet's formation that impact resulted in the Earth's axis becoming tilted to an angle of 23.4 degrees this tilt is responsible for the seasons the moon's gravity also stabilizes the Earth's axis thus preventing extreme variations in climate higher life forms probably couldn't have evolved without a moon of this size the fact that the Earth even exists in its present form is likely the result of a special Journey embarked on by Jupiter and Saturn through the early solar system how did the planets in our solar system actually form well things started out very different than they are today let's take a look this is the current situation here we have the Sun the terrestrial planets and further out the gas giants with the Milky Way in the background but the situation was completely different back then yeah sure we already had the Sun but Jupiter and Saturn were much closer to the Sun than they are today foreign that's in between in this region here there weren't any rocky planets yet just planetesimals basically Rocky fragments no bigger than say 10 kilometers then something very interesting happened the Jupiter started to drift inward we call this migrating and in doing so swept these planetesimals before it Like a Shepherd driving sheep and these planetesimals began to collide with one another eventually forming the rocky planets we have today like the Earth here under normal circumstances Jupiter would have driven these rocky planets into the Sun and we wouldn't exist but fortunately we have Saturn Saturn was following behind Jupiter and when they entered a so-called three to two resonance Saturn forced Jupiter back out again and they've been in their current orbits since then in summary we can count ourselves lucky that we have Saturn it prevented us from ending up in the sun that's it some scientists think that Jupiter's migration to the inner solar system may have stunted Mars growth Jupiter's gravity suppressed the planetoids in the vicinity of Mars in the early solar system as a result Mars was unable to find sufficient material to continue growing the scenario of a Jupiter swinging like a wrecking ball through the inner solar system could also explain the younger age of the rocky planets there is only room for them to develop there once Saturn caught up with Jupiter and dragged it back out thus vacating the inner solar system once more [Music] the gas planets grew at a faster rate than the terrestrial planets at the birth of the solar system the inner solid planets found themselves in a material-rich region near to the central star but they could only fully form once Jupiter had retreated foreign Jupiter and Saturn don't have a solid surface they consist predominantly of liquid gas but the two Giants have a multitude of moons and life could have Arisen on them take the moon and Senators near Saturn for example it's a small Moon of 500 kilometers in diameter with a thick ice crust and apparently an ocean of liquid water beneath this crust you can even see it because it has geysers we have liquid water we have energy which is generated by so-called tidal friction and it's very likely that we have a core composed of carbon-containing materials so we have three of the components needed for life and what we also need is time and we certainly have time in other words if these three components were sufficient then we should expect there to be primitive life in the ocean beneath enceladus's thick ice crusty [Music] this attorney in Moon Titan has a diameter of 5150 kilometers making it larger than Mercury it has an atmosphere and oceans of methane due to its local circumstances it's possible that life could develop here too researchers see Titan as analogous to the early Earth it's certainly one of the most interesting objects in our solar system the central question is of course has life originated elsewhere could life have developed somewhere else naturally we have to clarify what we mean by life when we say life we mean Life as We Know It certain organic compounds that combine to make sugars amino acids and up to DNA and RNA that create replicable organic compounds and ultimately something like us is this only possible on Earth under the conditions we have here or is it also possible under other conditions The evolutionary history and structure of our solar system apparently allow for certain places conducive to the development of life and the two gas giants Jupiter and Saturn probably played a decisive role in this they were responsible for organizing the planetary system into its current state and the zone between Jupiter and Mars Bears witness to this process the asteroid belt the fact that Jupiter and Saturn migrated Inward and then back out again is something we haven't known about for very long but it was a curialization for understanding how the solar system became structured the way it is the pair act like gigantic slingshots on their migration inward they first scattered the planetesimals outward to where the Kuiper belt is today and when they migrated back out again they scattered the objects there back toward the inner region where the asteroid belt is now and that's the situation we have today the asteroid belt between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars contains everything from Tiny fragments of rock to minor and dwarf planets it's also referred to as the planetoid belt or main belt this is where the majority of the remnants from the planet formation process reside the gravitational proximity of Jupiter inhibits the formation of additional planets the incomplete objects are a throwback to the primordial state of our solar system these objects are like time capsules of our solar system because they contain within them their primordial material used to create the solar system by examining these types of planetary objects we can draw conclusions about the sort of material that was around at the time and from which the planets psyche is of particular interest in this context the asteroid which is 250 kilometers in diameter is thought to consist almost entirely of iron and nickel the lump of metal is similar to the composition to the core of the earth just much smaller psyche could be one of the original building blocks of our solar system the core of an earlier solar system object the asteroids in our solar system are witnesses to its creation 4.6 billion years ago most of them have a somewhat elongated shape their gravity isn't strong enough for them to form a ball over a million of them have been discovered to date with thousands more being identified each month the largest objects in the asteroid belt are spherical and are classified as dwarf planets like Ceres which was studied over a period of four years by the NASA probe Dawn during its Mission Dawn approached the surface of Ceres to within 50 kilometers data gathered suggests the presence of an underground ocean this makes Ceres a possible Target in the search for life in the form of microorganisms in our solar system Jupiter is not only responsible for spreading all these objects around the solar system but thanks to its enormous gravity it protects the inner planets from this Rubble too we do ask ourselves what all these objects are was there once a large planet that broke up we still have no definitive answer but we do know that Jupiter stabilizes the asteroid belt if Jupiter weren't there the asteroids would disperse and probably collide with the Earth too as it is they stay where they are and don't bother us beyond the orbit of the outermost planet Neptune stretches another region containing remnants from the birth of our solar system the Kuiper belt begins at a distance of around 40 astronomical units that is 40 times the distance between the Sun and Earth and stretches outward to 500 astronomical units [Music] so the kbos or Kuiper Belt objects can be orbiting the Sun at distances of between 6 billion and 50 billion kilometers they take several hundred years to complete one orbit the dwarf planet Pluto is considered a kyber belt object too when you go beyond the orbit of Neptune there are a huge number of objects that are composed primarily of gas basically water ice but that far out other gases like CO2 and methane freeze too so everything that we think of as a gas is frozen solid out there and a whole host of objects have stabilized there that were left over from the birth of the solar system there's a huge amount of material out there and now and then it Ventures into the inner solar system most comets originate from the kyber belt if a comet approaches the Sun the constituent gases evaporate and form a nebulous envelope the so-called coma flown by the solar wind two tails form that can reach several million kilometers in length composed of dust and one of plasma in 1994 astronomers got the opportunity to witness Jupiter's gravitational power with their own eyes the comet Shoemaker Levy named after its discoverers came too close to the gas giant Jupiter made short work of the Comet which scientists estimated to be four kilometers in size the strength of Jupiter's gravity was so great that it broke up into many small pieces like pearls on a necklace then they all crashed into Jupiter one after the other Jupiter doesn't have a solid surface so they disappeared into the clouds each throwing up a little puff of cloud which looked like pockmarks on Jupiter's surface and then they disappeared that is how Jupiter swallowed up many of these objects protecting us from them in the process comments from the Kuiper belt which have an orbital period of under 200 years are referred to as short period comets another reservoir of celestial bodies is the Oort cloud which surrounds the solar system like a shell as far out as the Kuiper belt the sun's gravitational influence is still such that the orbits of the objects there lie in the ecliptic that is the equatorial plane of the Sun but when we get further out the Sun's gravity is simply too weak and then the object spread out in all directions around the Sun objects from the Oort cloud regularly journey into the inner solar system too the Comets that originate from there have orbital periods of over 200 years and are therefore referred to as long period comets scientists suspect that around a third of the objects there originate from former sibling stars of the young Sun finding a piece of this primordial material and studying it would be a dream come true for researchers the sun's Stellar siblings are now long gone they've moved on to an orbit around the center of the Galaxy as such our current Stellar neighbors didn't form together with the Sun which stars are closest to Earth first there's Proxima Centauri it's just 4.3 light years away which doesn't sound like much but if I were to fly there with my shuttle or a rocket it would still take me 150 000 years to get there that's a really long time but it's just a red dwarf anyway so you can pretty much forget it not much farther away are Alpha Centauri A and B a binary star system both are nearly as big as the Sun so a good star system we're still not sure whether it has planets though we haven't seen anything conclusive yet and then there are few others at distances of six and eight light years but they're all just red dwarfs 75 of all the stars out there are red dwarfs and thus not really capable of having planets conducive to life how he meant the distances in our solar system are is illustrated by the Journey of the two space probes voyagers one and two 35 years after its launch in 1977 Voyager 1 became the first human-made object to cross the outer boundary of the heliosphere the region of our solar system subject to the influence of the solar wind and its magnetic fields [Music] meanwhile the two probes have traveled a distance of roughly 20 light hours but our neighboring binary star system Alpha Centauri is 4.3 light years away for humans and even for space probes the nearest stars are Out Of Reach [Music] Stars Alpha Centauri a and Alpha Centauri B orbit one another the pair are in turn being orbited by another star Proxima Centauri a red dwarf our Cosmic neighborhood is dominated by such low mass red Dwarfs of the 64 Stars within 15 light years of the sun 49 are red Dwarfs [Music] of a mass of between 60 and 7 of the mass of the Sun nuclear fusion does indeed take place within them but it happens much more slowly than inside our sun which means that these Stars can live for a very long time up to 100 billion years to put this in context our universe is roughly 14 billion years old our solar system is 4.5 billion years old but these Stars can live much much longer Proxima Centauri has at least one planet Proxima Centauri B the closest confirmed exoplanet to the Earth the planet is located in the habitable zone and could have liquid water however its star exhibits flare activity they would be fatal for potential life scientists can only study our neighbors with telescopes the distances are simply too great for anything else realistically speaking there's absolutely no chance of getting anywhere close using a conventional rocket motor time will tell if we can invent other forms of propulsion capable of doing so in the future but I'm actually very pessimistic about the possibility of our children or grandchildren or great great grandchildren having propulsion systems capable of traveling such fast distances a light year is roughly 10 trillion kilometers a trillion is a million times a million and you can't cover these enormous distances using a conventional rocket our solar system is seemingly unique at least in our immediate Cosmic neighborhood we live in an exemplary planetary system moving through a peaceful and thus perfect region of our galaxy and scientists have yet to discover anything in the vastness of space that could provide the basis for a similar origin story system is simply perfect for the development of life and in particular for higher life forms like us is this all just a cosmic accident well our solar system might not be unique but it's certainly very special because it's in just the right place in our galaxy it has Jupiter and Saturn which protect us from the asteroids and that migrated in just the right way in the beginning so that the Earth didn't fall into the sun we have the moon which stabilizes the Earth's axis and it's thanks to this unique combination that we even exist at all great that it worked out this way our creation Story begins 4.6 billion years ago with the death of a massive star a supernova the shock wave compresses Interstellar material and thousands of new Stars Are Born our sun among them with it the solar system and planets form in the perfect location and at the perfect time our solar system is one of hundreds of billions in our galaxy alone nonetheless it's still something very special on the third planet out the Earth life came to be perhaps a completely normal event in the vastness of the universe or perhaps instead the unprecedented consequence of a lucky Cosmic accident

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Id: cjr1ISpjN6M

Length: 50min 1sec (3001 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 22 2023