Major new exoplanet findings to be announced next Monday
- Thread starter Wanderlust
- Start date
By wrong size they probably mean gas giants.
Any planet that's massive enough will retain enough of its atmosphere to make the air pressures at the surface, if it has a surface, pretty hostile for anything. If we judge by the giant planets that we know of, if it has a surface it won't be solid, so the best that you can get is some kind of an ocean, but extremely different from the oceans we know.
The atmosphere pressure at the “surface” on Neptune is 10 GPa, which is a bit extreme (1000 times more than the surface of Venus, and 100 times more than Mariana trench): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(pressure)
Not that life capable of withstanding such pressure is impossible to exist, but it wouldn't be the place where I'd start looking for life.
Though I don't understand why the idea about floating life forming in the upper atmosphere is so easily dismissed these days.
Any planet that's massive enough will retain enough of its atmosphere to make the air pressures at the surface, if it has a surface, pretty hostile for anything. If we judge by the giant planets that we know of, if it has a surface it won't be solid, so the best that you can get is some kind of an ocean, but extremely different from the oceans we know.
The atmosphere pressure at the “surface” on Neptune is 10 GPa, which is a bit extreme (1000 times more than the surface of Venus, and 100 times more than Mariana trench): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(pressure)
Not that life capable of withstanding such pressure is impossible to exist, but it wouldn't be the place where I'd start looking for life.
Though I don't understand why the idea about floating life forming in the upper atmosphere is so easily dismissed these days.
Makes one wonder... If we imagine for a moment that Mars used to be habitable and well populated with life, what would a period analogous to our Jurassic period produce on such a planet?
So my wish just came true. Not kilometer-wide, but the dishes are getting funding.
USAF is paying SETI to study the Kepler planets:
http://www.seti.org/afspc
http://www.seti.org/node/905
