Goldilocks Must Like Extrasolar Planets in Bang! The Complete History

Summary: Extrasolar planets are where, not how, Goldilocks abides them in Bang! The Complete History of the Universe by Chris Lintott, Brian May and Patrick Moore.

Estimated extent of the solar system's habitable zone is shown in graphic created Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2011, 21:19: EvenGreenerFish at English Wikipedia, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons

Extrasolar planets are perhaps akin to solar satellite Titan, appealing locationally but not atmospherically to Goldilocks in Bang! The Complete History of the Universe by Chris Lintott, Brian May and Patrick Moore.

Titan alone among solar satellites bears methane atmospherically and as channeled liquid flows on pebbled, wet-clay Xanadu plain dunes; and a substantial atmosphere, albeit 98-plus-percent nitrogen. Methane-rained surfaces configure crater-free hills and valleys; ethane and methane-composed, south-polar, square-mile (20,000-square-kilometer) Lake Ontario; and temperatures around minus 292 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 180 degrees Celsius). Not even single cells develop on Titan, where low temperatures defeat life, whose fundamental quality of replicating patterns of chemical reactions cold, dark chemical waters divulge.

Icy-surfaced and somewhat crater-free Enceladus, among Saturn's smaller and perhaps younger moons, emits water plumes, some for Saturn's more tenuous rings, from south polar internal waters.

Earth and the satellites Enceladus, Io and Triton, as our solar system's only known active worlds, perhaps find few or no frequent counterparts among extrasolar planets.

Exoplanet detection techniques thus far give us solar-like systems with gas giants whose inward migrations perhaps got Earth-like, rocky, small, wet extrasolar planets destroyed or ejected. The transit method, indirect exoplanet-detecting technique, has night skies monitored for semi-dimmed starlight as extrasolar planets head across star faces, like Mercury's and Venus' solar transits. Indirect methods impel identifying many of the 700-plus known extrasolar planets and include the wobble technique of parent stars' semi-wobbled itineraries from their exoplanets' gravitational pull.

More than one-half of all stars journey through interstellar space as binary, double-star systems with one or multiple extrasolar plants more Neptune than Earth or Jupiter-like.

Indirect detection of extrasolar planets kindles knowing an exoplanet spectrum from differences between parent star spectra with the former orbiting behind, versus transiting across, the latter.

Transiting extrasolar planets HD209458b and HD 189733b respectively log 10,000-ton (9,071.85-tonne) atmospheric losses per second from parent star ultraviolet radiation and lodge Jupiter-like atmospheric carbon dioxide. Coronagraphs mask parent star light and manifest massive young star HR8799's three-planet solar-like system and Jupiter-like planet Fomalhaut b moving in parent white star Fomalhaut's disk. Brown dwarfs navigate, star-like, by their own light but net unstar-like trace atmospheric lithium and masses not even 8 percent our Sun's or 75 times Jupiter's.

Jupiter-sized Gliese 570D, dimmest brown dwarf, observes mass 50 times Jupiter's, trace atmospheric lithium and surface temperatures at 750 Kelvin (476.85 degrees Celsius, 890.33 degrees Fahrenheit).

Perhaps gravitational interactions push brown dwarf stars away from their partner stars so that the former pass through interstellar space as free-floating, lonely, wandering rogue planets.

Gravitational lensing techniques that quest recognizable, repeated brightening and fading of distant stars thus far queue up a handful of brown dwarf rogue and wandering planets. An inclination of 17 degrees in a 248-year orbit and, like double planetary system companion Charon's orbital period, a 6.3-day rotation resists Pluto running into Neptune. Charon, one-half Pluto's diameter; Cubewano, unofficially catalogued 1992 QB1; and Eris, larger than Pluto, swarm trans-Neptunian Kuiper Belt object space (for Gerard Kuiper, 1905-1973).

The International Astronomical Union since 2006 terms Kuiper Belt objects and Main Belt asteroids (excluding dwarf planets Ceres, Eris, Haumea, Makemake, Pluto) small solar system bodies.

British rock band Queen's John Deacon, Brian May and Freddie Mercury perform Nov. 16, 1977, in New Haven, Connecticut: Carl Lender, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Estimated extent of the solar system's habitable zone is shown in graphic created Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2011, 21:19: EvenGreenerFish at English Wikipedia, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Estimated_extent_of_the_Solar_Systems_habitable_zone.png

British rock band Queen's John Deacon, Brian May and Freddie Mercury perform Nov. 16, 1977, in New Haven, Connecticut: Carl Lender, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:QueenPerforming1977.jpg

For further information:

Marriner, Derdriu. 8 November 2012. "Solar System Formation Accepts Leftovers in Bang! The Complete History." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/11/solar-system-formation-accepts.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 1 November 2012. "Star Formation Acts Local on Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/11/star-formation-acts-local-on-bang.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 25 October 2012. "Dark Energy Accelerates Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/10/dark-matter-accrues-in-bang-complete.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 18 October 2012. "Dark Matter Accrues in Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/10/black-holes-are-ionizers-in-bang.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 11 October 2012. "Black Holes Are Ionizers in Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/10/black-holes-are-ionizers-in-bang.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 4 October 2012. "Ionized Gas Bubbles Atomize Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/10/ionized-gas-bubbles-atomize-bang.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 27 September 2012. "Lighted Spaces Are Late in Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/09/lighted-spaces-are-late-in-bang.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 20 September 2012. "Inflation Affects Space in Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/09/inflation-affects-space-in-bang.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 13 September 2012. "Lighted Dark Space Affirms Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/09/lighted-dark-space-affirms-bang.html

May, Brian; Patrick Moore; and Chris Lintott. 2012. Bang! The Complete History of the Universe. London UK: Carlton Books Ltd.