Life after Red Giant Phase?

It is widely accepted that once the sun undergoes its inevitable Red Giant phase, the Earth will be destroyed... but recently scientists have discovered planets that have actually survived their star's Red Giant phase! Does this mean that there is hope for the earth as well? It is estimated that the sun will become a Red Giant in about 5 billion years, so its nothing we need to worry about for the immediate future... just something to think about. 


The two planets, KOI 55.01 and KOI 55.02 actually had a significant effect on the evolution of their star, KIC 05807616. When observing the star, scientists noticed a variation in brightness... this, they discovered was due to light being emitted from the planets! Eliza Kempton from The University of California says:
"Light that is directly emitted or reflected from extrasolar planets has been detected in the past, but this is the first time that this particular method has been used for the discovery of a planetary system." 

The reason for the survival of these planets is that they were large enough to strip the star of a significant amount of its mass. It is predicted that before the star became a Red Giant, the planets would have been large and gaseous, like Jupiter. As the star became a Red Giant, the planets were caught in its gravitational pull, and as they came closer, they stripped the star of some of its mass, while the star stripped them of their gaseous atmosphere, leaving only the solid core behind. 


The difference between these planets and Earth is that these planets were much larger and closer to the star. When the sun turns into a Red Giant, all life on Earth will inevitably be destroyed, but it is possible that the planet itself will still survive.

Science and God?

There are a lot of people in our world today that see Science and God as two completely separate entities than cannot be combined. Personally, I do not agree with this. A few weeks ago when I heard Dr. Jocelyn Bell Brunell speak I remember she mentioned that she believed strongly in God. There are actually a surprising number of Christian Scientists out there, who see no

problem with the co-existence of both God and science. Many people treat them as binary opposites, associating God with things like faith and believe, and science with fact, logic and deduction. However, science is not completely made up of facts and logic. There are theories, things that we think are true, but cannot know with 100% certainty. God, likewise, is not based entirely on faith and belief. The more I look a the complexities of the universe, the more I realize that the odds of this happening by chance are extremely slim! What are the chances of life occurring on earth! If we look at all of the other hunks of rock and gas in our universe, isn't it kind of strange that we are the only planet that can sustain life? Even more amazing is the quality and complexity of life that we have! If scientists found even a few colonies of bacteria on another planet, they'd be super excited, but on earth we have so many different species of life! Humans are especially fascinating! The fact that we each have an individual personality, abstract thoughts and a consciousness is prettyamazing! The human body is also incredibly intricate, each  tiny cell and organ that depend on all these other cells and organs in order for us to have life! All of this cannot have come from nothing! Essentially if we go to the very very beginning, earth had to come from somewhere! According to the 'principle of causality', everything must have a cause,

but what caused the matter that started the big bang to come into existence? Where did it come from? Putting God into the picture gives us an answer to this question. I personally do not believe in the big bang theory (I may do another blog later as to why...), but there are many christians who do, saying that it was God who started it by providing the materials needed for it to happen, and setting everything up just right, so that life could exist. What about the idea that God created science? He put all these mechanisms into order, and us figuring them out is the science...

"The Universe's Speed Limit"

Einstein once referred to the speed of light as "the universe's speed limit," this is because in order for E=MC^2, and a lot of other theories to hold true, light must remain the fastest entity in existence.

The Speed of Light is 186 282 miles per second! Photons, or the basic unit of light, have no mass/ weight because they do not interact with the Higgs field (as other particles with mass do). Therefore, light does not have a "speed limit." Basically, the speed of light is an infinite speed, nothing can travel faster, because objects with mass require energy to move, and the faster you get, the more energy is required. In order to travel at the speed of light, an infinite amount of energy would be needed. We do not even have enough energy in our universe to propel one little electron to the speed of light.

The Meaninglessness of Time: At the speed of light, the concept of time is completely meaningless. Everything appears instantaneous. To us, light from something 10,000 light years away would take 10000 years for us to see, but if we were actually travelling at that speed, the journey would be non-existent. It would seem that you had just left and you were already there. The speed of light is only finite from the point of view of the person outside. If we could move at the speed of light, we could go anywhere, no matter how far, in 0 seconds!

The Speed of Gravity: Technically, the speed of gravity is the same as the speed of light (because of the universal speed limit). If the sun were to suddenly disappear, the earth would continue to orbit for 8 minutes before realizing the sun was gone and leaving its axis. Likewise, if the sun were to disappear, we would still see sunlight for 8 minutes, since light from the sun takes 8 minutes to get to earth.

What if something could go faster than the speed of light? Theoretically, this should never happen, but if, somehow something was able to travel faster than light itself, it would then be the fastest entity in the universe, and would be able to time travel!