Out of Pod Experience

NASA conference at the agency’s headquarters.

They were discussing the finding of seven Earth-sized planets around a nearby ultra-cool dwarf star. Three of these planets are in the habitable zone, that means liquid water can be available on those.

What if life could have evolved on all three of them, and maybe even intelligent life, on all three of them. 👽😈😺

That would be incredible! Good stuff for a sci-fi book or maybe even cinematic movie.

They were talking about naming those planets, so what are your proposals? Or maybe we should wait until we determine how are they called by inhibitants?

Bob, Bob and Bob.

Meanwhile, since the system is close to Earth, David Braben has started that they're modifying the system data in Elite: Dangerous to add the extra planets, and the system itself will have its name changed. Most brown dwarves in E:D are procedurally generated since these kind of stars aren't visible from Earth farther than 40 light years and they don't have a catalog name. This one was added with a fake name and the galaxy building engine gave it a few planets and moons... the moons would be invisible from Earth so they will remain.

As for life on those planets, well, they're dark. Brown dwarves don't emit light, only infrarred, so those planets will be warm enough for liquid water but essentially lit by perennial starlight. So their available energy budget is extremely low...


PS: don't ask me why, I feel inclined to think of that system as T-Rappist One.

What is even more interesting is that if life is present on any of the planets the planets might have two evolutionary cycles.

From what I have read is that if planets are close enough together they exchange or transfer atoms back and forth between each planet. Basically like a Capacitor Transfer Chain.

The normal orbits for each habitable planet around TRAPPIST would create Earth like environments but when the planets aligned and the energy transfer started something interesting might happen. Plant life and animals that would normally remain dormant until the extra energy present brought them out of hibernation would create the secondary evolutionary cycle for the aligned planets. The animals and plants would scurry about looking for mates and food to ensure they had enough stored up energy to last through the next hibernation cycle. Once the planets were close to going out of alignment the animals and plants would begin to return to a state of hibernation until the next alignment cycle took place where the new offspring of animals and plants would emerge from their sleep to begin a life that they had dreamed about while in the womb.

What we know from earth, is that life, when it starts, have a lot of potential to find a way. On earth there were many extinction events, yet, life is still here, inteligent of sorts.

Humanoid shape is dominated by two lower limbs for moving, and two upper for grabbing and operating tools. I suspect those schemes can come up many times in evolutionary history. The biggest barrier would be the size and way the nervous system have to operate, to say its intelligent and humanoid life.

But maybe 4 lower limbs and 4 upper limbs would be better in certain other environments? Maybe it would add more advantages in water environment, or when fighting?

Bipedal creatures simulations.
Soft-bodied creatures simulations
Watching those simulations I see that it all looks so convergent to what we know from biology already. So indeed aliens could have humanoid shapes, if the environments are not a big outtake to what we know from earth.

hmmm, low mass class M star and most likely tidally locked planets. Does not sound like a very nice vacation spot unless you want to see a dim eternal sunset/sunrise. 😞

Sunset and sunrise are my favorite times of day - where can I find a travel agent?