This is the third book in the series that included 'The Theory of Nothing' the "The Universe Revealed.' My purpose in this new book is to more fully explain how science is actually done and how science fits into our culture along with religion and p...
This is an important subject because many Earth-like planets orbiting red dwarf stars in the habitable zone are tidally locked to their star.
Tidal locking is where the planet is kept from normal spinning by gravitational dominance, essentially causing the planet to turn in sync with its star. When this happens, one side of the planet always faces the star and the other side faces the blackness of space.
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Our moon is tidally locked to Earth. Mercury is tidally locked to the sun. Actually, it is in spin-orbit resonance, rotating 3 times for every 2 times it orbits the sun. Pluto and Charon are mutually tidally locked. Many close binary star systems are tidally locked. It appears that many Earth-like planets found so far are tidally locked to their respective star.
The question than is: could life develop on such a planet?
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The answer is: maybe.
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New super computer simulations at Cal Tech show what might happen if the Earth were tidally locked to the sun. It seems that the oceans on the side facing the sun would evaporate and form lots of clouds and storms, which would help reflect a lot of light back into space. Nevertheless, the warming effect would create global winds that would flow to the dark side and cause some melting of the ice in the twilight zone where the sun would appear to be low in the sky all of the time. The simulations show that the side facing the sun would end up as a desert and the side facing away would be a frozen wasteland. The twilight zones between these two extremes would be habitable. Alaska could end up being in summer all year around. Other places would resemble the island of Kayai in Hawaii. In any case, on Earth the effect would allow the temperature to ride in a reasonable range in this thin area that would span around the globe. How would plants thrive in a region of perpetual daylight? It turns out that some plants could survive in this sort of environment of eternal day, but many would not.
Simulations show that an eyeball Earth (a planet where the side facing the star has a large continent right in the middle, surrounded by oceans) would be the norm where the twilight zone would be habitable as long as the atmosphere maintains clouds. Clouds could create a greenhouse effect to maintain warmth on the side facing away from the star. This computer simulated result gives astronomers hope that life could have developed on these Earth-like planets like proxima-b orbiting red dwarf stars. However, what is needed is observational proof. This will be forthcoming. Look at this way, an estimate based on observations using the Kepler Space telescope is that there are 8 billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy, many of which orbit red dwarf stars that make up 76% of the stars in the galaxy. That's why this work is important to the understanding of how life could develop on planets that are quite different than Earth. The James Webb Space telescope should give us a better view of planets orbiting nearby stars. Another expected telescope, WFIRST (Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope), will allow a much better view of these exo-planets. Lots of exciting new things are coming.
