Life On Other Planets?

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arctic
and Antarctic. George W. Wetherill even notes that �Even if a planet or
moon could not support life globally, each could contain a tiny niche where
life could thrive� (Science News, 328).
What are the most favorable conditions for life to develop? It is
now known that life simply cannot emerge anywhere that does not contain
water. It is mostly preferred that this water exists in liquid form, but
there are possibilities that life can form in freezing as well as boiling
conditions. Water and energy, which both exist in many places in outer
space, are prime biological prospecting sites. this ranges from deep sea
thermal vents to the Martian tundra, yet unexplained (Mission To Mars, 4).

Many also feel that the discovery of life is all a matter of time
and odds. Some feel that simply given enough time, some kind of life will
emerge on a planet capable of sustaining it. One equation that has been
made widely popular among the world's extraterrestrial life hunters is
one that ...

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coalesces out of a large cloud of gas and dust. Although
there have been reports of planets around various stars in the past, none
has withstood further testing to confirm them up until October 1995, when
two Swiss astronomers: �Michel Mayor and Dider Queloz announced that they
had detected periodic velocity changes in the star 51 Pegasi. These
changes are caused by the star moving back and forth along our line of
sight�(SETI). It is believed that this movement is due to the gravitational
pull of one or several planets around 51 Pegasi, a star similar to the sun
in size as well as mass. Because this planet is so close to the star, it is
concluded that its temperature is probably ...

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