Three exoplanets where life would exist

The universe is unimaginably vast and continues to be. So here we are uncertain if we are alone. In this post, I want to talk about three exoplanets that might give us hope that we are not alone.

(Before diving into them, know that all of these planets are in the habitable zones of their stars, meaning liquid water could potentially exist there. However, I want to clarify that we cannot say for certain that liquid water definitely exists.)

Kepler-186f 

Discovered by Elisa Quintana on 17 April 2014, Kepler 186f is an exoplanet 580 light years away from us. A year there is just 130 Earth days. As mentioned above it is in the habitable zone of its star. But to know for certain, we need information about its atmosphere. The planet is too far for us to be able to acquire any knowledge about its atmosphere.

Also, planets, Kepler-186b, c, d and e are all tidally locked, (meaning one side of the planet always faces the planet.) The chances of Kepler-186f being tidally locked are about 50%. 

Based on all the knowledge that we have, the planet does not have a tilt like that of our Earth. This means that there will be no seasons like those here on Earth. However, it could have a significant tilt if there is a planet revolving between Kepler-186f and Kepler-186e we haven't yet discovered.

Kepler 22b

Kepler 22b, an exoplanet 600 light years away from us, is another planet that is in the habitable zone of its star. It is about 2.4 times the size of our Earth!

The planet takes about 290 Earth days to complete its orbit. 

If it had an atmosphere similar to the Earth's, its temperature would likely be 22°C. 

So, it stands as a pretty strong candidate, but we are uncertain about the composition of this planet (more than the others actually). We don't know if it is rocky planet or a gas giant. 

HD40307 g

Exoplanet HD40397 g is a part of the HD40307 star system. It is about 42 light years away from home. Now this is significantly closer to the other planets we discussed above. But 42 light years is still really far away (3.974 × 10¹⁴ km). 

Anyways, it is a super Earth as its mass is 7.1 times more than that of our Earth. The planet takes 197.8 Earth days to complete its orbit. 

And it is most likely not tidally locked, which is a plus. 

But that is it for this post. If I missed anything or if you want me to write about a topic, please comment down below. See you next Sunday. 

light pollution

Have you ever looked up and wondered where all the stars have gone and why the sky looks so dull. 

I like to spend most of my nights gazing up at the stars. But every time I found the sky empty, a strange and incomprehensible sadness filled my heart. 

While researching this post I stumbled upon a term called 'Noctalgia'. This term is used to describe the feeling of sadness or longing for the dark skies. 

Now, we don't get to see dark skies anymore due to light pollution. Light pollution is caused by excessive and inefficient use of artificial light.

According to Wikipedia, about 83 per cent of the human population lives under light-polluted skies. 

To make matters worse, light pollution has increased by 49 per cent from 1992 to 2017. 49 per cent!

Light pollution might seem like a small stargazing-related problem but it is way worse than that. 

First, let's talk about the impacts of light pollution on human health. Light pollution causes headaches, constant fatigue, stress and anxiety. Some studies have even shown that light pollution causes severe diseases like breast and prostate cancer. 

Light pollution does not just harm human health but also animals and plants. 

Many animals rely on moonlight to navigate paths for migration. Artificial light at night (ALAN) can confuse them.

ALAN leads to hormonal imbalances and affects sleep cycles in animals.

In plants, ALAN disrupts their photoperiod (the amount of sunlight a plant receives during a 24-hour period). This further disturbs photosynthesis.

As I have mentioned before, ALAN also affects star gazing as we cannot see the galaxies and the stars anymore.  ALAN also makes it harder to see further astronomical events which can be really helpful for new discoveries.

We just talked about the impacts of light pollution, but what about the steps we can take to reduce and limit it.

As individuals, can obviously reduce the use of artificial light unnecessarily and switch off the light when not in use.

But we would need to use them after all. So we can use efficient LED lights that direct light downwards. We can use warm tones of lights instead of the blue ones. When we switch the lights in our rooms, we can put on our curtains to prevent a lot of light from going out of the room.

Some communities measure, we can take our educate, the public about, like pollution And its negative impacts.

We can encourage dark sky parks where there is less lighting and people can come and enjoy the dark skies. This one would be hard but really helpful in the long run. 

One measure that authorities can take is to set timers on the street lights. And for the dark sky parks, I talked about earlier, the government can provide funds for that too. 

I hope you like this post if you have any questions or want me to write about any other topic, comment down below. I will meet you guys next Sunday.

Thanks for reading!!