People are full of curiosity. People’s curiosity has made many inventions: new land’s discovery, new technologies – communication tools, internet, and robot. Even in this digital era, our curiosity is never satisfied!
There is a curiosity that has been held since years ago. With many researches that until now aren’t yet success, many disasters like tsunami and earthquake, and density of population that cause poverty, it makes people become more and more curious about this thing.
What is it?
Yes, find trace of life outside earth!
That sound’s interesting. There are two objects that interest us so much: moon and Mars. The first, moon. Moon’s terrain that is very similar with earth makes moon become the most decent place that can be lived by people that’s ever found. But of course earth is still much better than moon. Moon doesn’t have atmosphere so the difference between night and noon’s temperature is very extreme. The sky is always black. In addition, trace of life isn’t yet proved though research is still being done until now.
The second, Mars. This red planet’s condition is also outmatched compared to earth due to great difference between night and noon’s temperature. But this planet is unique because NASA found that there are many waterway traces. Maybe those traces were rivers thousands years ago. NASA is trying to collect that proof by landing Phoenix, an explorer robot, in Mars (but why NASA doesn’t land people in Mars??)
Phoenix landed on Mars. This picture is taken from http://www.geek.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/phoenix-mars-lander.jpg
With the improvement of outer space’s technology, people want to explore objects that are extremely far from earth. In this galaxy, planets that are very far from earth such as Jupiter and Saturn have many orbits. Maybe one of their orbits has life sign. For example Europe, Jupiter’s natural satellite. But Europe’s terrain just consists of ice desert, so it’s impossible to find life sign in such place like that. Ice as far as we stare, isn’t it wonderful??
There are more interesting objects than Europe. There are Jovian, Europe’s natural satellite and Enceladus, Saturn’s orbit. According to scientists’ estimation, both objects have dark, deep, and huge mass of “water”. The depth of sea is more than ten times deeper than the deepest trench in the earth. Let’s imagine, in such huge and deep area like that, doesn’t it have “sea creatures”?? It’s scary, isn’t it? Though there’s life sign in Jovian and Enceladus, it doesn’t assure people can live there because maybe Jovian’s creatures breathe using methane. Maybe Enceladus’ creature is fiercer than the fiercest predator in earth. Maybe they are smarter than us. Maybe…maybe….yeah, continue imagine by yourself ^^
Illustration about water in Enceladus. This picture is taken from http://www.dailygalaxy.com
Not just in this galaxy people seek the life sign. People also try to seek life sign outside Milky Way, but the condition is much more extreme than in this galaxy, such as planet than tenth times greater than Jupiter, or noon’s temperature that reach 2000 degree Celcius, or planet that circle its center so close.
Illustration about exoplanet that circle so close from its star. This picture is taken from http://www.scitech.ac.uk/PMC/PRel/images/ExoPlanet02.jpg
There are so many questions in my mind. If life sign is actually found, is the condition better than earth?? Are the creatures welcome us?? Can our technology escort us to the destination planet that is tenth light years from earth??
But it’s the most important question that you must think: if it’s so hard to seek life sign outside earth, if there is no place that can match earth’s beauty, why do we often treat our beautiful earth irresponsibly??
