Dr. James Pierce’s
Favorite Quotes from Life in the Universe Essays
–– Stars ––
Every term, each student in my Astronomy 115 course (Life in the Universe) was assigned to write an essay giving his or her opinion on the following question:
“Do extraterrestrial technical civilizations currently exist in our Galaxy?”
This group of quotes is about stars. (The typos and misspellings are real, but they are not mine.) The material is presented here without comment; you will have to make up your own.
Essay Quotes: Stars
- The stars that could possibly support life, if they live long enough, are either too close or too far away from their light and heat source.
- I would have to say that the best chance of survival would be under a main sequence star that would be called G2.
- One thing that I have learned is that all the starts and galaxies are not treated equal when it comes to devfeloping life.
- The star that would be required is a main sequence star because they generate nuclear energy be conservation of helium and hydrogen.
- How heavy, big or small, hot or cold, location to the planet, how bright the star shines, and the lifetime of the star are essential elemnets involving life.
- The distance has to be in the right location far enough away so the planet would not be too hot, and not so far that the rays would be too cold for anything to survive.
- It has been proven that stars which are similar to the Sun are the majority of stars. But, in order for the right circumstances to fall into place to be similar to the situation we have, the odds are of this actually occurring are small.
- By looking at our solar system and what makes it possible for Earth and us as human beings to exist. For this to happen to other palnets they must have some kind of solar energy such as heat to keep us warm. Like our sun does for us. Therefore when looking into the universe we look for stars that are compatible with our sun that can help form extraterrestrial life. When looking into our universe we find many of sun like stars out there. We know that more than just our sun exist under its classification as a star. Therefore we know that it could present more life than just the life we have on Earth.
- These stars range from very hot to very cool in temperature, as well as their brightness.
- The Sun is a main sequence star, but there are others also, depending on the phase.
- There are stars of many different shapes and sizes in our galaxy.
- If it was a hot star it would ultimately fry everything that it hits thus killing all life.
- F, G and K stars are much more common among the main sequence stars and just all the stars in general, which will increase the chances greatly of finding another habitable planet because of so many different chances.
- Even though all of these stars contain these traits, out of 200 billion, there surely is at least one star that has all of the requirements.
- The next principle a star must consider is, if it is a population I or populations II star.
- Many of the stars out in our galaxy are main sequence stars, and we cannot see all of them with our technology. I believe that we are just missing the stars that have life near them.
- Stars located in the outer limits of our galaxy would be some of the coldest places known.
- Our Sun is a G2 star, which is nearly in the middle of the solar spectrum.
- The main sequence stars are stars that have the correct luminosity and temperature for its radius.
- The next crucial element to the formation of life on a planet is the size of the star in which the planet is orbiting.
- These two factors, star class and orbit of the planet, are the crucial starting points of any extraterrestrial technical civilization having a chance to begin.
- If extraterrestrials were to live on stars there would have to be certain requirements so that they could live there. Such as they temperature would have to be cool enough otherwise it would be too hot for them to live there. These types of things just do not seem to exist out in space. That is why if extraterrestrials were to be real they would have to be on Earth.
- There are several sun-like stars in our galaxy that may have an Earth-like planet orbiting about the sun-like star consisting of life.
- Of course not all of the 200 billion stars are like the sun but there are several star-like stars in our galaxy and because much of our galaxy has not been searched yet, it gives hope to those who believe such beings exist.
- It would be selfish to think we are the only ones out of 96 billion that meet the cortrect conditions. The number is too large to think that.
- There are different types of stars on the main sequence as well and since O, B, and A stars have a short lifespan they are removed from the sun like planets.
- The sun is a G2 planet.