WHAT IS CREATION?
The search for another planet that is similar to planet Earth calls for understanding the term ‘creation’. In my view, a created object is original, unique, distinctive, and one of its own kind of object that may not be replicated either using a spontaneous process, or by a deliberate, purposive action. Planet Earth qualifies as a created, original, unique, distinctive, and one of its own kind of object and there is no second celestial object similar to Earth. The recent discovery of Kepler – 452b exoplanet has stimulated interest in possibility of finding a second Earth-like planet in our vast universe. Earth is the fifth largest planet of the Solar System and the only one known to support life. Earth is surrounded by an envelope of gases, mostly oxygen, nitrogen, and water vapor, called the atmosphere. Gravitational forces have molded Earth into a spherical shape that bulges at the equator. Earth’s equatorial diameter is 7,926 miles or 12,760 Km; polar diameter is 7,900 miles or 12,720 Km. Earth is unique for its inhabitants experience the change of seasons caused by tilt(23.5 degrees) of Earth’s equator to the plane of its orbit.
Among celestial objects, stars are luminous and planets such as Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto are nonluminous and revolve around Sun or around another star. The other terrestrial planets of Solar System, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Pluto resemble Earth in size, chemical composition, and density. The ‘Jovian’ planets of Solar System, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are much larger in size and have thick gaseous atmospheres and low densities.
Individuality of each celestial object becomes discernible while studying period of revolution and period of rotation. The planets of Solar System may have shared their births from a same source called ‘gaseous nebula’ and yet they display individualistic variations in the characteristics of motions performed. Man’s life and experience of life is synchronized with Earth’s period of rotation around its own axis, and Earth’s revolution around Sun.
Man exists as a mortal being with lifespan or lifetime as his living functions are operated and are regulated by a precise timing device called ‘Biological Clock’ which may be responsive to changes in external environment such as day, and night. For each planet has its own period of rotation and revolution, the living experience of man can never be the same on different planets even if they have some ability to support some forms of life. Man is a created being for his existence require Earth’s rotational speed, and revolutionary speed to operate changes of intensity of external environmental light illumination while Sun shines all the time.
Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162, USA
Bhavanajagat.org
 |
|||||||
| Bhavanajagat.orgBhavanaJagat is a private organization devoted to the study of man’s status in Nature. The purpose… | |||||||
| View on www.facebook.com | Preview by Yahoo | ||||||
Kepler-452b: What It Would Be Like to Live On Earth’s ‘Cousin’
Space.com
Mike Wall
© SETI Institute/Danielle Futselaar.
Kepler-452b may be Earth’s close cousin, but living on the newfound world would still be an alien experience.
A group of pioneers magically transported to the surface of Kepler – 452b — which is the closest thing to an “Earth twin” yet discovered, researchers announced yesterday (July 23) — would instantly realize they weren’t on their home planet anymore. (And magic, or some sort of warp drive, must be invoked for such a journey, since Kepler-452b lies 1,400 light-years away.)
Kepler-452 is 60 percent wider than Earth and probably about five times more massive, so its surface gravity is considerably stronger than the pull people are used to here. Any hypothetical explorers would thus feel about twice as heavy on the alien world as they do on Earth, researchers said.
“It might be quite challenging at first,” Jon Jenkins, of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, said during a news conference yesterday. Jenkins is data analysis lead for the space agency’s Kepler spacecraft, which discovered Kepler-452b.
But visitors to the exoplanet would probably be able to meet that challenge, said former astronaut John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. After all, he said, firefighters and backpackers routinely carry heavy loads, mimicking (albeit temporarily) the effect of increased surface gravity.
“If we were there, we’d get stronger,” Grunsfeld said. “Our bones would actually get stronger. It would be like a workout every day.”
The high-gravity environment would probably lead to significant changes in the bodies of Kepler-452b colonists over longer time spans, he and Jenkins said.
“I suspect that, over time, we would adapt to the conditions, and perhaps become stockier over a long period of many generations,” Jenkins said.
Other features of life on Kepler-452b would be more familiar. For example, the exoplanet orbits a solar-type star at about the same distance at which Earth circles the sun.
“It would feel a lot like home, from the standpoint of the sunshine that you would experience,” Jenkins said. Earth plants “would photosynthesize, just perfectly fine,” he added.
Imagining other aspects of life on Kepler-452b requires much more speculation, since it’s too far away to get a good look at. Researchers suspect that the planet is rocky, like Earth, but they don’t know for sure. Kepler-452b probably has a thick atmosphere, liquid water and active volcanoes, but these are best guesses based on modeling work.
Models also suggest that Kepler-452b might soon experience a runaway greenhouse effect, similar to the one that changed VENUS from a potentially habitable world billions of years ago to the sweltering hothouse it is today, researchers said.
Kepler-452b’s star is apparently older than the sun — 6 billion years, compared to 4.5 billion years. It’s thus in a more energetic phase of its life cycle than the sun is; indeed, the star is about 10 percent larger and 20 percent brighter than Earth’s sun. (That means the sunlight on Kepler-452b, while familiar to explorers from Earth, would not be exactly equivalent.)
The increased energy output of its sun might currently be causing Kepler-452b to heat up and lose its oceans — if the planet does indeed harbor oceans — to evaporation, subsequent breakup by ultraviolet light and atmospheric escape.
Such a scenario likely won’t occur on Kepler-452b for another 500 million years or so, assuming estimates for the planet’s size and the star’s age are accurate, Jenkins said. (The stronger gravity of larger planets allows them to hang on to their surface water for longer periods of time in such situations than smaller worlds can.)
“But, you know, we don’t know exactly,” Jenkins said.
So he and other members of the discovery team helped devise an artist’s concept that imagines how Kepler-452b would look if a runaway greenhouse effect were beginning to unfold.
The illustration shows “not oceans, but residual bodies of water that are highly concentrated in minerals after the oceans are largely gone, and you have lakes and pools and rivers left,” Jenkins said.
“It’s a fascinating thing to think about, and I think it gives us an opportunity to take a pause and reflect on our own environment that we find ourselves in,” he added. “We’ve been lucky and fortunate to live in a habitable zone for the last several billion years, and we’d like that to continue on.”
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedot.com, Facebook, or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
Copyright 2015 SPACE.com, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
