Concept explainers
Habitable Planets? Roles: Scribe (takes notes on the group’s activities), Proposer (proposes explanations to the group), Skeptic (points out weaknesses in proposed explanations), Moderator (leads group discussion and makes sure everyone contributes). Activity: List the hypothetical planets described below in order from most likely to support life to Least likely to support life, and explain your reasons for each ranking.
a. a planet orbiting a star of spectral type B (approximately 10 solar masses) in a circular orbit and having an expected average temperature of 300 K b. a planet orbiting a Sun-like star in a circular orbit at a distance twice Earth’s orbital distance from the Sun c. a planet orbiting a star with a luminosity one-quarter the Sun’s luminosity in a circular orbit at a distance one- half Earth’s orbital distance from the Sun d. a planet orbiting a Sun-like star in an elliptical orbit ranging from Earth’s orbital distance to 10 times Earth’s orbital distance from the Sun
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Chapter 24 Solutions
COSMIC PERSPECTIVE
- For which of the following reasons (select all that apply), is it useful/important to send rovers to other planetary bodies in our solar system? O a. The engineering innovations developed to produce successful/viable rovers and landers on other planets can help lead to developments in the technology used here on Earth that may have taken far more time to develop without the limitations provided by space travel to foreign worlds. O b. The data collected can help improve our understanding of the evolution/development of our solar system. O. Rovers/landers can be outfitted with various tools and equipment that can be used to inform of us of the geological histories of each of the planets they visit. O d. More direct probes of the planetary surface are possible to detect signs of the building blocks of life. O e. Rock samples can be used to calibrate our estimations of the age of the solar system.arrow_forwardHow is a habitable zone likely to change over time? a. get narrower b. move further from the star c. they aren't likely to changearrow_forwardKepler-444 is one of many stars with terrestrial planets that is over 10 billion a) What do you think the spectral type of Kepler-444 might be? b) How do stars of this spectral type end their lives? c) If evolution followed a similar course on a habitable pranet around a star similar to Kepler-444, it would be 5 billion years more advanced than we are. Let’s try to project our future and see what happens. In particular, suppose our civilization gets motivated enough to colonize another planet. Kepler indicates that most stars have potentially habitable (and colonizable) planets, so roughly how far away is the typical “nearest" planet? d) The New Horizons probe on its way to Pluto took 9 years to travel 30 AU. If we could send colony ships with the same average speed, roughly how long would it take to reach the typical nearest planet? уears old.arrow_forward
- Which of the following is least reasonable regarding the difficulty in contacting extraterrestrial life using space flight and radio communication. Group of answer choices Space flight to the nearest star would take thousands of years with current technology. Even if another intelligent civilization is within a few hundred light-years of us, conversations would be very slow with a turnaround time of decades or even centuries. The spacecraft that NASA sent to Proxima Centauri a few years ago should be approaching its target within a decade or two, depending on solar wind conditions. Earth has been broadcasting at radio wavelengths since the 1930's, so any civilization within a radius of about 100 light-years or so could have received the broadcast by now. Without some major breakthrough, interstellar space flight is totally impractical.arrow_forwardcience 1 Technological advances in space exploration have O A. shown scientists that the ideas of the earliest astronomers were all fully correct. OB. taught scientists many new things about the Earth, but not other planets. OC. helped scientists modify and expand previous knowledge about the solar system. OD. revealed that the Moon is more capable of supporting life than Earth is. Reset Submit 0 of 10 Answered Session Timer: 5:46 here to search 立arrow_forwardThe principle cause of our intense interest in Mars in the decades before the dawn of the space age was that Answers: A. a few astronomers believed that they saw evidence of an intelligent civilization on Mars. B. Mars has seasons just like the Earth and therefore should be inhabitable by humans. C. Mars has an unusual surface color and global dust storms, creating strange weather patterns. D. Mars has unusual orbital properties making our understanding of its motion around the Sun very difficult.arrow_forward
- 7. Complete the table below for the habitability of several solar system planets. Temperature can be hot, moderate, or cold. Amount of atmosphere can be thin, thick, or moderate. Liquid wa- ter amount can be lots, little, or none. Planet Venus Temperature Liquid Water Atmosphere Earth Marsarrow_forwardThe most promising places to look for other habitable planets would be orbiting stars similar to our Sun, or even dimmer than our Sun in our own solar system in other galaxies orbitin bright, giant stars like Betelgeusearrow_forwardIn this chapter, we identify these characteristic properties of life: life extracts energy from its environment, and has a means of encoding and replicating information in order to make faithful copies of itself. Does this definition fully capture what we think of as “life”? How might our definition be biased by our terrestrial environment?arrow_forward
- 1. The discovery of Cosmic Background Radiation helped explain...a. Nebular-Condensation Theoryb. why the outer planets are composed primarily of iron and other heavy elementsc. why the sun is composed primarily of hydrogen and heliumd. both a and b are correcte. none of these are correctarrow_forwardConsidering what you learned from the solar nebula theory, how likely do you think it is to find habitable planets in other solar systems? Visit NASA’s Kepler mission to learn more about this search, and write a ½ page summary on the mission.arrow_forwardPlanetary Nebula Age. Suppose a planetary nebula is 1 pc in radius. If the Doppler shifts in its spectrum show it is expanding at 20 km/s, how old is it? (Note that 1 pc equals 3.1x1013 km, and 1 year equals 3.2x107 seconds, to two significant figures.) Please round your answer to two significant digits. At = yearsarrow_forward
- AstronomyPhysicsISBN:9781938168284Author:Andrew Fraknoi; David Morrison; Sidney C. WolffPublisher:OpenStaxHorizons: Exploring the Universe (MindTap Course ...PhysicsISBN:9781305960961Author:Michael A. Seeds, Dana BackmanPublisher:Cengage Learning
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