As most of my readers probably already know, I frequently write articles that are published in various print and online periodicals in addition to the material for this web site. Recently, I accepted a gracious invitation from Paul Gilster to become a regular contributor to the Centauri Dreams web site which specializes in discussing “peer-reviewed research on deep space exploration, with an eye toward interstellar possibilities”. Considering how much I have enjoyed reading this web site over the years and its overlap with my own interests, I am confident that this will be a good match.
My first contribution to Centauri Dreams, “Habitable Moons: Background and Prospects”, has now been posted. With the discovery of the first extrasolar giant planets starting almost two decades ago, I became fascinated with the prospects of habitable moons as more giant planets, which were too big to be habitable themselves, were found in or near their systems’ habitable zones. This essay in Centauri Dreams presents some background on the beginnings of the scientific investigation of the possibility of habitable moons and provides material summarizing the current state of the field including efforts to search for exomoons using photometric observations like those collected by NASA’s continuing Kepler mission.
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Related Reading
“Habitable Moons: Background and Prospects”, Centauri Dreams, September 19, 2014 [Post]
“Habitable Moons”, Sky & Telescope, Vol. 96, No. 6, pp. 50-56, December 1998 [On line version]
“Habitable Moons: A New Frontier for Exobiology”, SETIQuest, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 8-16, First Quarter 1997 [Article]
“Publication Watch: Habitable Moons Around Extrasolar Giant Planets”, SETIQuest, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 16-22, Second Quarter 1997 [Article]
“GJ 832c: Habitable Super Earth or Super Venus?”, Drew Ex Machina, June 27, 2014 [Post]
“Habitable Planet Reality Check: 55 Cancri f”, Drew Ex Machina, May 7, 2014 [Post]
The space culture has become saturated with the assumption that only ‘Earth-like’ planets need apply for human habitation. The chances of us finding planets as portrayed on shows like Star Trek, where everywhere there are conditions just right for sustaining human life, are so slim as to be prohibitive. If we focus on learning how to live on planets that are well beyond the margins of suitability – planets like Mercury or Saturn’s moon Rhea – there is probably no star system that would be out of our reach. That would guarantee a ‘Star Trek’ interstellar culture, which seems to be the driving vision for most of the advocacy.
While the view of planetary habitability for average person may be heavily influenced by “Star Trek” and other pop culture scifi, that is certainly not the case for the scientific community. As I have written numerous times in various forums over the past two decades, planets that can support humans without aid are going to be a VERY tiny fraction of habitable planets as defined by scientists. The overwhelming majority of habitable planets (or moons) as traditionally defined will have CO2 concentrations too high for terrestrial animal life to survive and most of the rest will have insufficient O2. In addition, no one (or at least, not myself or any scientist or space exploration advocate I know) is arguing that humans can only live on “habitable planets”. We can survive anywhere as long as we have the means of generating an artificial environment to support us – anywhere from Mercury to Rhea to stations we construct in the void of space.