A One million Years of Solitude

Are we alone in these vast islands of the universe with countless star systems and equally countless planets orbiting around it?

In spite of our eyes opened to the visible, radio and x-ray spectrum, till today, we didn’t got any evidence of a planet conducive for the development of life, at least the life as we understood. From among the trillions of galaxies, a mediocre spiral galaxy called the ‘Milky Way’ and at an unimportant spiral arm of that galaxy, there is a very ordinary star called Sun and his family Solar system. Well, it takes just 250 million years to complete one revolution about the galactic centre with an orbital speed of 220 Km/sec.  Even though there are giant and majestic planets in this family, only the blue beauty, our mother earth, is lucky enough to be the womb of this peculiar existence called life with a wonder called consciousness.

So, Earth is lucky.

Assume there are two Suns in our system; one rises when the other sets or if you could see more than one Suns in the Sky. (Alas, you will definitely miss the beautiful starry sky. Thomas Alva Edison will be very disappointed because electric bulb will not be a necessary requirement.) The multiple Suns are not a mere assumption. This is the condition in most of the places in the universe. More than half of the star systems are binary systems; two stars orbiting each other. Remaining majorities are multiple star systems. Any system with more than one star would probably never allow developing life because the planets were either too hot or too cold to sustain life.

How lucky is our planet with this rare privilege of having one Sun !!

Planets orbits were either circular or ellipse. The shape is determined by the term called ‘eccentricity’, a value between zero or One. If the eccentricity is zero it is a circle and when the value moves towards one, the shape is flattened and becomes ellipse. Earth’s orbital eccentricity is only 2%, hence the orbit is almost a circle. If that was slightly high, may be 10 to 20%, then our oceans would boil when earth reach the nearest point of the Sun and freeze at the farthest point, result……. no life     

Again Lucky!!

The mass of the sun determine the amount of energy it gives off. Earth is again lucky in this regard. If the mass of the Sun is slightly less than the current value, Earth would be colder than Mars and if the mass is slightly higher ,Earth would be hotter than Venus.   

All star may possibly has a very thin habitable zone, again Earth is lucky enough to be in that zone.

It seems that Earth was carefully designed just to keep the life in her lap.

Or is it the other way?

When we examine the conditions that support life, we are bound to find the environment which we live satisfy all that conditions.

Whichever way we look, it is a fact that, as far as we know, ours is the only cosmic habitat.

 A One million Years of Solitude

One last question, suppose there exists a superior habitat than us will they be friendly to us or hostile?