Could there be an even better planet
for us than Earth?
Scientists are searching for
a superhabitable world
that wouldn’t just rival Earth,
but be a place where life could
thrive even more easily.
And they're looking at exoplanets,
You wouldn’t be able to find an
exoplanet by looking through a telescope.
All you’d see is the
bright glare of the stars they orbit.
NASA built the Kepler telescope
to discover exoplanets.
And before it ran out of fuel,
the Kepler telescope surveyed
our region of the Milky Way galaxy.
Its technology uses the transit method
to find planets
hundreds of light-years away.
How?
It measured the fluctuation of light
coming from distant stars.
When a planet transits,
or passes in front of a star,
the star isn't as bright.
So the Kepler telescope
uses that to detect exoplanets.
This is not an easy thing to do.
But during its nine-year lifetime,
the Kepler telescope confirmed the
existence of 4,367 exoplanets.
If you’re a longtime fan of What If,
you’ve probably heard this before,
but Earth is a very special place.
And even if a planet is deemed to be habitable,
it doesn’t mean that it resembles Earth very much.
A habitable planet is a rocky planet
located in the habitable zone,
allowing water to stay on the planet's surface in its liquid form.
That's it.
Venus and Mars are habitable planets,
but they are definitely not like Earth.
So let’s talk about three major conditions
that we’d look for when searching for
an even better version of Earth.
First, it would need to have sunlight.
Our Sun’s lifespan is about 10 billion years,
and it took 4 billion years for anything
more complex than the simplest life-form
to pop up on our planet.
But K-type dwarf stars have
lifespans of about 70 billion years.
So if we found an exoplanet orbiting a K-type star,
there would be more time for life
to evolve and live on it.
The second major condition is temperature.
A planet that’s too hot or too cold
wouldn’t be able to host the life-forms we’d need to survive.
But if we find a planet that's a mere 5 °C (8 °F) warmer than Earth,
and it has more water,
we could be looking at Earth 2.0
covered in a lush,
biodiverse rainforest.
The third major condition we’d be looking for is size.
Gravity retains a planet’s atmosphere,
and there's a direct relationship between gravity
and a planet’s size.
So if we find a planet that's only 1.5 times larger than Earth,
it would be able to hold on to its interior heat
and maintain its atmosphere for a longer time.
But bigger isn’t always better.
While Earth-sized exoplanets are usually rocky,
And if an exoplanet is too small,
it would likely be barren,
like Mars.
So, are there any exoplanets out there that meet these requirements?
You know, all this comparing data and gathering information
is starting to make my head hurt.
I wish I could just enter everything into one piece of software
and we could see which exoplanet could be Earth 2.0.
Instead I have to sift through spreadsheets and confusing software.
If you run a business, then you know my pain.
But luckily for you, there are solutions, like NetSuite.
You could stop paying for multiple systems
that don’t give you the information you need when you need it.
And you could ditch the spreadsheets.
There is no better time to upgrade to NetSuite by Oracle,
the World’s number one cloud business system.
NetSuite gives you visibility and control over your financials,
HR, inventory, eCommerce, and more.
It’s everything you need, all in one place.
And it doesn’t matter how much revenue you’re making,
a million, a hundred million,
you could be saving time and money with NetSuite.
Join the 24,000 plus companies using NetSuite right now.
If only there was a NetSuite for exoplanet discovery.
So while I’m stuck doing this,
you should let NetSuite show you how they’ll benefit your business
with a free product tour at NetSuite.com/WHATIF.
Schedule your free product tour right now at NetSuite.com/WHATIF.
That's NetSuite.com/WHATIF
Okay, I found a planet that could be superhabitable.
Kepler-1649c could be a contender to become Earth 2.0.
It’s 300 light-years away,
and orbits a red dwarf star.
It gets sunlight,
but only 75% as much as Earth.
So it might be a bit cooler there.
And there wouldn't be any seasons on Kepler-1649c.
A full orbit only takes 19.5 Earth days,
so we'd need to get used to that.
And it could be tidally locked,
which means one side of the planet constantly faces its sun,
while the other side faces space.
Also, living on a planet that orbits a red dwarf star could be risky.
Sometimes, red dwarf stars send out massive flares,
dousing an orbiting planet in UV light
and creating huge temperature fluctuations.
But if we decide that Kepler-1649c
is worthy of becoming Earth 2.0,
what would happen next?
Using our current technology,
it would take at least 2,000 years
to reach this Earth 2.0.
And since this planet is so far away,
we only know about its size,
the distance to its star,
and the makeup of its atmosphere.
So, we could pack up humanity,
take the multi-generational trip
to Earth 2.0,
and discover that it’s more like
a Neptune 2.0.
Uh, yeah.
There’s no way we could survive on a gas giant.
We’d need much more information
before we send humans to any possible Earth 2.0s.
So, right now,
NASA is developing a tiny probe
to travel at one-fifth of the speed of light.
It could greatly expand our knowledge of exoplanets.
And we shouldn’t limit ourselves to looking just at exoplanets.
A moon receives direct solar energy from its star,
and the planet it orbits
reflects solar energy toward it.
So maybe a moon could be more suitable
for human life than an exoplanet.
The most Earth-like planet in our Solar System is Titan,
Saturn's largest moon.
So if we want to save thousands of years of traveling,
maybe Titan could make a good second home for us.
What would life be like on Titan?
Well, the seasons would be really,
really long,
for one thing.
But I’m getting ahead of myself
because that’s a story for another What If.