From what the planets are like, to whether they could be places to find life, join me
as we explore how Teegarden B Has Highest Possibility Of Alien Life!
Very recently (like found in 2019 recently), observers from CARMENES (who are a team looking
for Class-M planets for us to habitate) found two Earth-like planets just 12.5 lightyears
from planet Earth.Granted, that's still pretty far and it'd still take us a long time to
travel there, but 12 lightyears is much closer than the 45,000 light years and beyond of
certain other "Earth-like planets" that have ben found.
Not to mention, these two planets feel like ones that could have both the necessary water
and land for us to live on: "The two planets resemble the inner planets
of our solar system," lead author Mathias Zechmeister, a research scientist at the Institute
for Astrophysics at the University of Göttingen in Germany, said in a statement.
"They are only slightly heavier than Earth and are located in the so-called habitable
zone, where water can be present in liquid form."
Research has obviously just begun on these two stars, but there is hope that they could
be the real deal.
For example, usually the fact that this is a red dwarf star (called Teegarden) would
be a red-flag, as they don't produce as much heat and light.
But, the two planets are actually closer to the sun, so that actually would work in our
favor.
The only truly "weird" thing about these planets is the orbits around their sun.
It takes them between 1-2 weeks to do it, even less than that in fact.
That's massively quick.
But, if you think about it, time is only a construct, so what would really matter is
how those quick orbits help or hinder the landscape.
Even if these two twins aren't perfectly suitable, the team at CARMENES are hopeful that other
Earth-like planets could be as close as they are, and possibly in the same system as them.
But for now, let's focus on Teegarden B, and talk about why certain people think that this
is the planet that has the highest probability of being a place where alien life can be found.
Obviously, the biggest hurdle has been cleared in that the planet in is in the habitable
zone of its star Teegarden.
You'd be surprised by how many "potential Earths" are out there, but few of them are
in a good range from their sun, which makes them either too hot or too cold, and when
you're trying to pick a planet to live on...you don't go to a planet of extremes unless you're
in an EXTREME emergency, am I right?
Anyway, on the planet Teegarden B, you'll find that the temperature is a suitable 82.4
degrees Fahrenheit on average.
Which means it's a semi-hot planet, but trust me when I say you'd rather have a "Summer
Day" on another planet than a freezing one or one that is so hot your skin will melt.
Furthermore, as outlined earlier, there is a VERY good chance that Teegarden B has water.
But not just water, oceans!
A LOT of scientists feel that the oceans of Teegarden B are not unlike what we have here
on Earth, and if that's true that could be an even bigger sign that there is life on
the planet.
Not to mention, if there is land masses on there and not just a water world (which hasn't
been confirmed as of yet but is likely) that would mean that it could be a near copy of
Earth with just different proportions of water and land.
But all of this would be moot if the star known as Teegarden wasn't one to "cooperate"
with the planet.
What do I mean by that?
Think about our own sun.
Because of the distance to our star (93 million miles in total) we don't get the brunt of
the heat or the light or the radiation that it produces.
We get just enough of it, and our atmosphere and magnetosphere deflects or absorbs all
the other things that could potentially hurt us if we were to get it full blast.
There are many stars in the universe, and many of them have Earth-like planets surrounding
them, including ones we truly believe could be the future home of humanity.
The problem is that most times the stars do things like solar flares, massive bursts of
energy and radiation that can destroy an atmosphere and cause untold damage to the surface of
the planet that we're trying to inhabit.
But in the case of Teegarden...despite it being a Red Dwarf star...it doesn't act up
at all.
In fact, it's been known to be a rather inactive and quiet star.
Which is great, because given the distance of Teegarden to Teegarden B (which is much
closer than the distance from the Earth to the sun), if flares were to happen, the planet
would be ravaged by it.
But since that's not the case, it appears as though, Teegarden B really does have the
best case scenario to produce life.
Before we dive into the question of whether Teegarden B has life at all, be sure to like
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Ok, so let's get to the elephant in the room here.
Is it fair to believe, given what we know about the planet, that Teegarden B has potential
life on it?
Well, if we take everything at face value, and base what we know about the creation of
life and how it can form in various plaecs...then yeah, it's fair to believe that there is some
kind of life on the planet.
But notice the words I used there, "some kind of life".
As in, we can't be sure by any stretch of the imagination that there is life on the
planet, and at present, there's no way of knowing what kind of life is on the planet
at all.
I know that sounds like I'm being vague and dodging the issue, but it's the honest truth.
Think about it in terms of our Earth.
Imagine the roles were reversed, and Teegarden B was looking for life on other planets and
they stumbled across Earth.
But not the Earth that we have now, but the Earth from the near beginnings of when life
formed on it.
If they looked at Earth with their technology and just looked at the surface of the planet,
they likely wouldn't have seen anything.
Why?
Because in the beginnings of Earth's life cycle (as in life being on the planet, not
the life of the planet itself) everything that was "alive" was small microorganisms.
We started out (if you believe in evolution and the Big Bang) as single-celled organism,
then became multi-celled organisms, then animals, then BIG animals, and after a series of extinction-level
events...humans came around.
The point we're trying to make here is that this was a process that took YEARS!
Millions and even BILLIONS of years depending on who and what you believe.
So what if, and this technically a possibility, what if life on Teegarden is there right now...but
it too is only in its beginning stages?
After all, there's no definitive way of knowing when the "spark of life" hit the planet.
Which is the same as Earth.
We can guess when life started to sprout but we can't know for certain, and that's the
key thing.
So what if there is life on the planet...but we just won't be able to see it until we get
there?
Which would be a big problem as its 12.5 light years away, and we can barely travel to the
moon and back without a lot of effort, let alone to other planets in our solar system,
and even planets in other systems!
It's going to take a while for us to figure out how to travel there.
But let's speculate for a bit, what kind of life COULD be there?
Well it would honestly depend on the surface of the planet and what's there, and what's
not.
A common misconception about Earth is that it literally just grew into what we have now.
It didn't, at all.
In fact, one of the great extinction events I mentioned earlier was called "The Great
Oxygenation".
Where planets started to learn how to do photosynthesis.
Which is a key part of life today, but back then?
Well...let's just say the planet and its creatures weren't used to Oxygen being around in such
a great supply.
It almost killed everything.
But then creatures got used to the Oxygen, the atmosphere developed into what we have
now and life found a way to keep going.
So to know what is on Teegarden B is to know what conditions are there for life to grow
from.
We don't know a lot about the surface of the planet, and if it's mostly water, or even
mostly land, that'll affect what can grow there.
Let's say for a second that Teegarden B is mostly a water planet.
That would mean that more than likely most life that we would find would be underwater
creatures of some shape or size.
Which would make it all the more difficult for us to find the creatures if we can't look
beyond the oceans surface.
Still, it's very possible that they are there.
There could even be life in the vents that connect to the core of the planet.
We've recently found here on Earth creatures that feed off the heat and warmth of geothermal
vents, and they are quite advanced.
If life works similarly on Teegarden B, then that would mean that there could be microscopic
creatures clinging to the vents and making their way through life like certain creatures
here on Earth.
Or, it could be that the planet is so advanced in its life right now that they're at the
fishes stage, or other aquatic creatures to be fair.
Let's cast a wide net on this, ok?
But what about if there's land?
What kind of creatures could be born there?
Well, just like Earth, it would depend on the kind of land.
Is it a desert?
A mountain area?
A long stretch of dirt?
We need more information, and don't forget, we can't say for certain that there are plants
as we know them on Teegarden B.
If there isn't, that could drastically change the ecosystems of the world in regards to
how we perceive them.
Which of course brings us to one of the biggest questions of them all...atmosphere.
As best we can tell, Teegarden does have an atmosphere, but given the technology we have
there is no way of knowing what comprises the atmosphere.
Never forget, Earth's atmosphere is not 100% Oxygen.
In fact, it's a mix of gasses that come together to give us the balance we need to live.
It may work similarly on Teegarden B, or, it could be VASTLY different.
And no matter what composition it is, it's going to affect what lives on the planet,
if anything is allowed to live there at all.
It's true that we think we know what can cause life or not on planets, but even we acknowledge
that evolution and other things can lead to surprising kinds of life.
Not unlike the microorganisms that live in the geothermal vents.
But until we get at least a hint of what the atmosphere is like, we're going to be guessing
as to what may or not be there, and guesses only take us so far.
So in truth, knowing all of these factors, it's fair to say that Teegarden B could have
life on it, and it's also fair to say that there could be something we don't know about
that prevents the planet from having life.
That's not meant to be a sleight, it's just the truth.
More times than you might think we've found planets that are Earth-Like in their positioning,
their size, and more, but then hopes are dashed when certain factors make it clear that this
isn't the place we hoped it would be.
Whether it be the sun having flares that destroy the atmosphere and thus make colonizing it
moot, or the surface conditions not being what we hoped, the atmosphere not being balanced,
etc.
There are a lot of things that can go wrong with a planet, and all it takes is one of
them to make it unihabitable to life as we know it.
In many ways, that's why the search for alien life continues on, because for all our advances
in life, we haven't been able to definitively state that there is life in the cosmos beyond
ourselves.
We've had hints, teases, mysteries, and possibilities, but nothing confirmed.
That's why planets like Teegarden B intrigue us so much, because these are the planets
that match up with what we know about life as a whole and we hope to learn more about
them to see whether our beliefs, our expectations and more are fair and accurate.
And should Teegarden B not be what we think it is, it just means that we'll go and look
for another planet that might be like Earth.
There are plenty of planets and stars out there for us to look for after all.
Of course, there's also the chance that there isn't life out there in the stars outside
of Earth.
Which I know sounds like a bad thing, but we've lived just fine without alien contact,
don't you think?
Either way, the search continues, and it'll continue until answers, true answers, are
found.
Thanks for watching everyone!
What do you think of the possibility that Teegarden B has the highest chance for alien
life in the universe?
Do you think that these beliefs and speculations are sound?
Or do you think it's just people trying to figure out why we haven't found alien life
yet?
Let me know in the comments below, be sure to subscribe, and I'll see you next time on
the channel!