Looking For Life on Other Planets One of the great controversies which has been going on for decades is whether there is a planet beyond the eight we are said to have. I believe Pluto should be counted as a planet and so do many others, but be that as it may. Proof is being offered that a planet called the 9th planet exists. Teams of scientists from California Institute of Technology, Universite Cote d’Azur and Southwest Research Institute have reported it and issued a scientific paper. It is claimed the movements of objects in a certain area are being affected by a force of gravity coming from an unknown body. It is presumed this object is an undetected planet. They still can’t locate the position of the planet and admit something else unknown might be at fault. In case there is anyone on the internet who has not heard about the 9th planet, it is also known as planet X and there are many theories connected to it. Some people believe it is on a very odd orbit and after thousands of years will come much closer to earth. You often hear of these people predicting disasters when this happens and claiming it gets too close. The truth of the matter is there is a place located after the last planet which is large and contains icy bodies and we don’t know everything which might be there. It is named the Kuiper Belt. Interestingly, NASA describes Pluto as being in it. It is said to be doughnut-shaped. Dwarf planets are said to be there along with comets, but there could very easily be much bigger objects like planets located in it. The objects located in the Belt are known as KBOs or Kuiper Belt Objects, but there are other objects that transit into and out of the Belt which are known as TNOs or trans-Neptunian objects. It is believed the material in the Kuiper Belt is mostly material left over from the formation of the solar system. Before we begin to think about exploring other solar systems, we should finish exploring our own. Between all the moons, planets and dwarf planets, the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud we have enough to explore for many lifetimes. Knowing this about our solar system, makes me think the old idea of exploring planets and moons we can see in other systems might be obsolete. If our solar system is typical other solar systems may have similar areas which will need to be explored. Things will probably be much harder for us than we first suspected. We could be going to a solar system we believe has seven planets and a few moons and it turns out they could have many more hidden away in other areas we didn’t detect. As we explore other planets are we going to take into account there could be underground civilizations living there or even underwater ones? We had semi-underground cities in the past on earth where people went for years probably to hide and escape harm. Many of them can be seen in Turkey. How they were so huge when the tools for digging were so primitive is still a mystery. I can see it now; we land on an alien planet and a creature in a space suit type garb walks over to us. His suit is not filled with air or any other type of gaseous atmosphere, but with water. The being is an intelligent type of fish. We have to be ready for anything. One of the things we should be working on which we will need is a universal translator. We might be able to use intelligent animals to help develop it besides all the languages on earth. Recently it has been said scientists were able to speak with a whale. I don’t know how far they got or what they understood, but it is a good start. One of the things we should be able to do is adapt Lidar, which is Light Detection and Ranging to a probe and send it to other planets and moons to see if there are any hidden structures or ruins which indicate intelligent life. There is a gas which on earth has only one source and it is living beings. The gas is named dimethyl sulphide. It has been found on a planet named K2-18b. It was found with the James Webb space telescope. The planet is 124 light years away so we won’t be going there any time soon. The primary source for this gas on earth is marine phytoplankton. It is amazing to me some object, in this case a planet, could have its atmosphere analyzed. Now that we know there are far more rogue planets, planets which have been knocked out of their systems, there is a chance we may come across some on our way to explore other planets. One has to wonder given their position of drifting through space, could life be possible? A NASA scientist has stated when asked about life being possible on one, life would be problematic, but not impossible.
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