Speculation on Planet Goldilocks

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Astronomers seem to be getting close to finding THE PLANET. The planet with a happy combination of gravity, temperature, and material (water, air, etc) capable of supporting human life…

Let’s suppose they did. I think it would be unreasonable to assume that such a planet would not have life (if you disagree, make the case below).

If it had life, what would it be like?

Would it be carbon based?

Would the flora and fauna be edible if a human astronaut stopped off for a snack?

What about microbiology? Would their "bugs" kill us? Could a human sneeze cause a planetary xenocide?

Very likely. Carbon and silicone are the only elements with enough bonds to form complex compounds.

The real question: Does Goldilocks have water?

ruveyn

As Europes visits to the new world showed, human bugs kill humans.

Nothing else seems to have suffered. We do have afew that jump species, but we are related.

Only one way to find out.

My real question about such a planet would be what color the foliage would be. Earth foliage is mostly green because plants absorb the blue light from our sun and reflect green. A different star may have a different band at the highest strength and the plant life may reflect a different color.

Imagine fields of red grain, or blue for example.

A lot depends on the spectrum of the star. If the star has radiation further down into the red, then the color of the plants will be different (most likely). The ability of photons to break molecular bonds is a function of their frequency.

ruveyn

Maybe they'll be populated with tall, skinny, blue humanoids who are strangely hot even if they're blue.

Who interact with their livestock, pets, etc by...connecting their junk.

So here's our consensus: to predict the color of plants in an alien star system you just look at what frequency the star puts out the greatest energy. And that will tell you - well atleast it will tell you what color the said plants will NOT be because the plants in question will want to absorb that frequency and reflect the less energetically invested frenquencies.


Our sun puts most of its energy into the yellow - and into the yellow frequencies close to green part of the spectrum ( our astronomy professor said the sun may actually appear green to alien astronomers).

So the least likely color for plants in our own solar system would be - something close to green. Earth plants should be anything but green.

So we are all off to a great start by really nailing the color of plants in our own solar system!
LOL!


A few plants, like Kermit the Frog, have 'noticed' the folly of being green and have belatetidly evolved red leaves to absorb more energy from the sun.

Since most plants on earth are the same 'unpredictable' color for our own sun's star type predicting the color of plants on planets in other star systems is futility squared.

I would guess that the most efficient color for plants in any star system would be black.
But even at the arctic circle there are few black plants on earth.

^^^ Hehee... Oh,those intelligent designers!

People tend to forget that evolution is simply random mutation edited by natural selection...

I don't quite understand this premise...as far as I know there isn't any difference between the energy of different frequencies of the visible light spectrum per say? Or for that matter, the entire EM spectrum. The only difference is frequency (and symmetrically wavelength)...

Good thing the mini-mag Orion starship has been invented.

Im not talking about any trait of frequencies themselves, Im talking about differences in which frequencies that stars (like radio stations) invest their energy broadcasting in.

The paint on a stop sign absorbs all frequencies except red, and reflects red. What it reflects is what we see.
So it looks red.

Unlike stop signs, people, moons, and planets, stars dont reflect light- but emit it.
But each star has its own idiosyncratic way of doing that. Red giants give off more of their energy in the red part of the spectrum- so they appear red- which is why they are called "red giants'. Blue stars invest more in the blue spectrum. Yellow stars, like our sun, more in the yellow. And our sun puts the peak energy very near to were yellow merges into green on the spectrum-so- from way out beyond pluto it might appear to have a greenish tint to its yellow.