- 2 hours ago
There're 8 planets in our Solar System: each of them has a unique atmosphere, size, color and distance from the Sun. What if we combined all of these planets in one? This Mega Planet would contain characteristics of other planets and would be absolutely amazing! Let's take a look at what it'd be like! And check out other interesting facts about the planets!
Category
🎈
FunTranscript
00:01Ah, Earth. Home. The third blue rock from the Sun. The only known planet where life can thrive.
00:07We have around 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and 1% argon, water vapor, and carbon dioxide, give or
00:15take.
00:15The perfect balance to support our respiration.
00:19The troposphere is the lowest and densest part of Earth's atmosphere, 5 to 9 miles thick.
00:24It's the part of the atmosphere that keeps changing our weather.
00:28For any life to exist, we would need this atmosphere and the same combination of gases to breathe.
00:33If all the planets in our solar system were combined to become a mega-Earth,
00:38then humans wouldn't have evolved the way we are today, and we'd have a very different planet.
00:44If we take the landscape of Mars, we'll only have solid land without large bodies of water.
00:50Earth is the only planet in our solar system with bodies of water.
00:54One of the first wonders to see will be Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the solar system.
01:00It towers Mount Everest by a long shot at 78,000 feet above the ground.
01:06Velus Marineris is a group of canyons that make the Grand Canyon in the U.S. feel like an average
01:12one.
01:12This wonder stretches for almost 2,500 miles and goes more than 4 miles deep.
01:19On top of these epic terrains, there's plenty of other grand-scale locations on Mars that are way bigger than
01:25the ones on Earth.
01:26The planet might be as large as Jupiter.
01:28If the Earth were the size of a grape, then Jupiter would be the size of a basketball.
01:34We'd have the size of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn floating around us.
01:38The rings may seem like some large chunks of rock in the air, but they're actually ice particles and chunks
01:44of iced rocks.
01:45They range from the size of pebbles to car-sized ones.
01:49Saturn's rings are supported by the unique gravity in the region.
01:53With a lot of these ice rocks floating in the sky, there won't be much sunlight entering the planet,
01:58which means the planet will always be colder than usual.
02:02Not to mention the many moons it has.
02:04Our mega-planet could also have many moons circling above us, contributing to the tidal waves.
02:11Jupiter is known for the Red Spot, a place twice the size of Earth that has hurricane-like storms that
02:17have been going on for hundreds of years.
02:19The people of Mega-Earth will settle far away from it.
02:24Mercury is a planet, but looks like the Moon due to all the craters lying around.
02:28That's because of many asteroids and comets striking it over billions of years.
02:33But the landscape here mainly consists of mountains, islands, cliffs, and valleys.
02:38The Caloris Basin is almost 1,000 miles wide.
02:41They believe it was formed by a comet.
02:44The deserts on Earth are mainly hot and consist of dunes of sand, but they also have flat plains and
02:50small hills.
02:51The largest desert in the world is the whole Antarctic continent.
02:55Mercury has no atmosphere to trap any heat, so it gets really hot when the Sun is facing it and
03:01freezing cold when the planet turns away from it.
03:04On this combined Mega-Earth, the deserts will most likely have a similar landscape to that of Mercury.
03:10The animals living here will probably be something like giant scorpions and desert snakes that soak in some sun during
03:17the day and go out hunting at night.
03:19But the soaring day temperatures would melt anyone walking.
03:23And even though Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, it's not the hottest.
03:29Venus has temperatures of nearly 900 degrees Fahrenheit.
03:33Scientists believe that the lands here are flat because of the extreme temperatures.
03:37But it's not all flat with some volcanoes and highland areas.
03:42We can probably find this terrain and climate near the equator since it's always hot there.
03:47Humans can't live there unless they build special domes to sustain life.
03:51But since the planet is now huge, not all its territory needs to be populated.
03:57Some areas will have the proper atmosphere for breathing, but some places might not have such luxuries.
04:03Over at the poles, the climate will most likely mimic Pluto's, even though it's not technically a planet anymore.
04:10In 2006, they officially declared it a dwarf planet.
04:14And it's even smaller than the Moon.
04:17There's not much known about this little mini floating rock, except that it's composed of around 70% rock and
04:2330% ice.
04:24Scientists believe that a part of its surface is covered in frozen nitrogen, solid methane, and carbon dioxide.
04:33Since the mega-planet is huge, gravity might be quite strong here.
04:38Jupiter's gravity is enough to double your weight.
04:41Humans will most likely be really tall and mega-sized to match the big planet.
04:46Even the oceans will be huge.
04:48Our oceans will look like little lakes compared to what mega-Earth has in store for us.
04:54Humans need something close to 24 hours in a single day.
04:57Our bodies adjusted to it quite well.
04:59But it wouldn't affect us too much if the day had a few extra hours or a few hours less.
05:06We can't live on any other planet without wearing the proper gear.
05:09We wouldn't last more than a few seconds in places like Jupiter, Neptune, and Saturn.
05:14It's possible to last as long as you can hold your breath on Mars.
05:18The atmosphere is thin and the gravity is similar to ours.
05:22But you might freeze.
05:23Even though it's a red planet, it's actually very cold and has ice caps in the poles covered with carbon
05:29dioxide.
05:30The same's true for Mercury.
05:32You can only last there as long as you can hold your breath and be in the sweet spot between
05:36the sunrise and the sunset.
05:39Ancient civilizations wouldn't have been as diverse as they were on Earth since the extreme terrains and conditions wouldn't have
05:46allowed for discovery and training.
05:48But eventually, as humans developed special technologies for certain areas, different cultures would emerge.
05:55Many animals would also evolve in specific and unique ways.
05:59But because of the planet's enormous size, isolation, and being on top of the food chain,
06:05would let certain animals be around since the beginning of the planet without evolving.
06:09So it's possible that this mega-Earth might have ancient dinosaurs roaming around and they'd be even bigger than the
06:16ones on Earth.
06:18And even though there's a high chance that some humans might be physically different than each other,
06:23there might even be more than one species of humans living on opposite ends of the planet.
06:29Because of the isolation, they evolved in their own ways according to their surroundings.
06:34Over the centuries, technological advancements would spread different cultures around and we'd be more open to each other.
06:42Neanderthals and Homo sapiens once lived side by side and were considered as the two species of humans.
06:48Neanderthals were intelligent and used tools for hunting and drawing.
06:52Homo sapiens were survivors and wandered around to discover new land.
06:57There could be two dominant human species and other minor ones that live in certain areas on mega-Earth.
07:04They'd be bigger, tougher, and faster than us.
07:06The ones who live by the trees would have elongated limbs to stretch out and swing from tree to tree.
07:13The ones that live in savannas will probably run really fast and have long legs for that.
07:20Countries and cities will be bigger than what we have on regular Earth.
07:23A country can be as big as Earth itself.
07:26The human population can reach tens of billions.
07:29Special transportation technology might be invented for people to travel from one continent to another.
07:35Covering those distances can take months or even years if using regular aircraft.
07:40High-speed trains that travel so fast over land and rocket-like planes going through the sky.
07:46Traveling through oceans will require extremely sturdy ships.
07:50Traveling through the Atlantic Ocean is already scary for many.
07:54So imagine going on a voyage across a body of water that's potentially eight times the size of Earth.
08:00We're going to need a bigger boat.
08:02There'll be areas to avoid, like the Red Spot with its perpetual storms raging on.
08:07But the tourist industry might have some room for anyone who wants to see it.
08:12Living on such a huge planet is unlikely going to become a reality for most of us anytime soon.
08:18But scientists are already discussing moving to other planets to find a new home for humans.
08:25You take a giant straw and begin to inflate Saturn.
08:29It's getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
08:34That's enough.
08:35Now let's add some giant rings.
08:37That's it.
08:38This is Super Saturn.
08:40Also called Saturn on steroids.
08:44It's a real object that scientists discovered in 2012.
08:47A planet named J1407b.
08:51And astronomers are still not sure what it really is.
08:54It could be a gas giant like Jupiter or Saturn in our solar system.
08:58Then there would be no solid surface there.
09:00And if you wanted to set foot on that planet, you'd just fall through it all the way to the
09:05core.
09:06But it could also be a brown dwarf.
09:08That's something between a large planet and a full-fledged star.
09:11Such objects have to be heavy enough to start thermonuclear reactions, like those going on inside stars.
09:18But the power of these reactions is too weak for brown dwarfs to glow and emit heat.
09:23To imagine the size and weight of J1407b, let's look at our Earth.
09:29If you put our planet on a scale, it'll show six and another 21 zeros tons.
09:34Our planet is also about 7,900 miles across.
09:39Now, that's Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system.
09:44Its diameter is 11 times as great as that of Earth.
09:47It's also 318 times heavier.
09:49If Jupiter were a bucket, you could put 1,321 Earths in it.
09:55And this is the hero of the day, Super Saturn.
09:59It's almost 20 times as large as Jupiter.
10:01To balance the scales, you'd need to put 6,360 Earths on the other side.
10:07The planet's rings are so wide that if they were in the solar system,
10:11they would take up more than half the space between the Sun and Earth.
10:15And if Super Saturn switched places with the original Saturn,
10:18you'd see those rings with the unaided eye.
10:21They would be larger than a full moon.
10:23Presumably, these rings appeared in the same way as the ones around our Saturn.
10:27One theory says they're the remains of a moon that was once there.
10:31Its orbit was unstable.
10:33And over time, the moon got torn apart by the tidal forces of the huge planet it orbited.
10:38Small pieces of the former moon took their places in the giant's orbit.
10:42They collided with one another, like in a blender.
10:45After some time, everything that was left was basically particles of dust and ice moving around the colossal planet.
10:53Another theory suggests that the rings appeared after the moon collided with an asteroid or another moon.
10:59Then the gravitational blender did its job and turned the moon's debris into the rings.
11:04Some scientists think the rings formed at around the same time as the planet itself.
11:09So they're just the remains of the planetary nebula, which is a cloud of gas, space debris, and dust.
11:15Later, it probably shrunk and solidified to form a planet.
11:20We can only guess where Super Saturn got its rings from, but scientists say their mass is 80% of
11:25that of Earth.
11:26It may mean that the moon that used to orbit J1407b was about the same size as our planet.
11:33There's a little gap in the middle of these rings.
11:36Scientists think Super Saturn's moon might be there.
11:39If this is the case, it should be about the size of Mars.
11:43If scientists are right and Super Saturn is actually a brown dwarf, then this is an incredible discovery.
11:50Scientists will be able to watch it age.
11:52Supposedly, brown dwarfs lose their energy and shrink, fading in the process.
11:57And when a brown dwarf exhausts all its energy, it turns into a black dwarf.
12:02It's easy to confuse it with a black hole.
12:05People haven't discovered black dwarfs anywhere in the universe yet,
12:08because they take trillions and quadrillions of years to form.
12:12Our universe is too young, and none of the stars, even those that appeared when the universe was born,
12:18have had time to become black dwarfs.
12:21One of the oldest objects in the universe is the white dwarf with a pretty long name, WD0346 plus 246.
12:29It's about 11 to 12 billion years old and half as cold as our sun, and it's still cooling.
12:35It would need around 10 plus another 15 zeros years to turn into a black dwarf.
12:40For comparison, the universe is 1.4 and 10 zeros years old.
12:45Scientists believe that a black dwarf will exist for about 10 plus 25 zeros years, feeding on dark matter.
12:52After that, its protons, the smallest particles of matter, will begin to decay.
12:57And then, the black dwarf will simply evaporate.
13:00That will take another 10 plus 49 zeros years.
13:04But if the protons remain intact, a much more interesting scenario will await the black dwarf.
13:10In another 10 in 1500 zeros years, the black dwarf will become an iron star.
13:16It's essentially just a cannonball in space.
13:19The iron sphere will exist billions of times longer than our entire universe has existed, until it suddenly turns into
13:27a black hole.
13:28So, the process of the formation of a black dwarf is extremely long.
13:33It'd take a regular star an insane amount of time to age that much.
13:37But Super Saturn, if it is a brown dwarf, may be much closer to this state.
13:43Saturn on steroids is not the only strange planet in our universe.
13:47This is Gliese 436b.
13:50It's been detected using the transit method.
13:52A transit happens when a planet moves between its host star and an observer.
13:57It looks similar to a lunar eclipse.
13:59This planet is 4 times the size of Earth, and 22 times as heavy.
14:05That's almost like Neptune.
14:07It's an exotic water world.
14:08The water there is solid, but it's not ice.
14:11It has a temperature of about 520 degrees Fahrenheit.
14:15The water in your pot turns into steam at 212 degrees Fahrenheit.
14:19But on Gliese 436b, the liquid remains solid because of the extreme pressure on the planet.
14:26Scientists have also discovered that the planet's atmosphere is evaporating into outer space.
14:31That's why there's a giant circular cloud around it.
14:34It's constantly moving in its orbit, giving the planet a long tail that looks like that of a comet.
14:41Cancri-E holds incredible riches worth more than all the money on Earth.
14:45There are diamonds scattered all over the planet.
14:48Cancri-E is about twice as wide and 8 times as heavy as Earth.
14:52This planet doesn't rotate. Only one of its sides always faces its host star.
14:58The surface temperature there is almost twice as high as the temperature of a burning fire.
15:03And since the host star is rich in carbon, the planet contains plenty of this element, too.
15:08The intense pressure and temperatures help turn carbon into graphite and diamonds.
15:13Unfortunately, this planet is 40 light-years away from our home.
15:17So it'd take about 730,000 years to get there on a regular rocket.
15:22Another planet rich in gems is HAT-P7b.
15:26It's about 1,000 light-years away from Earth.
15:28It's 60% as large and nearly twice as heavy as Jupiter.
15:32The planet is so close to its host star that it makes one revolution around it in just two Earth
15:37days.
15:38Because of such close proximity to the star, HAT-P7b is almost as hot as a white dwarf.
15:45If you look at the night side of this planet, you'll see unusual clouds.
15:50Scientists believe that these clouds may be rich in corundum material.
15:55This is the very substance that forms rubies and sapphires.
15:59So it's likely to rain very expensive and beautiful gems there.
16:03Wasp-12b is one of the darkest planets ever discovered.
16:07Only one of its sides faces its host star.
16:10The planet's surface is so dark that it eats up about 94% of all visible light.
16:16So it looks a lot like a black hole.
16:18The host star heats up the planet so much that the material there continuously evaporates.
16:24Then the star's strong gravity pulls this cloud toward itself, forming a disk.
16:28But TRES-2b is the champion.
16:32It's the darkest planet known to people.
16:34It absorbs 99% of the light coming from its star.
16:38Which means it consumes more light than a piece of coal.
16:411% of the remaining light looks red as it gets reflected by this gas giant.
16:46From afar, this planet looks very evil.
16:49One of the oldest planets in the universe is PSR-B1-620-26b.
16:54It's about 12.7 billion years old.
16:57This means that it formed about 1 billion years after the Big Bang.
17:01The planet is so old that its two host stars have had time to evolve.
17:05One is a white dwarf.
17:07The other is a pulsar that makes almost 100 revolutions per second.
17:11Sunrises on this planet must be stunning.
17:14Right now, this star system is moving toward a dense cluster of stars.
17:19This is likely to lead to a stellar collision.
17:21So the fate of this planet is unknown.
17:25Kepler-438b is one of the most Earth-like planets.
17:29It's only 12% larger and is in the habitable zone of its host star.
17:33Not too close and not too far away.
17:35It's a sweet spot where water doesn't evaporate because of the heat and doesn't turn into ice because of the
17:41cold.
17:42This planet might host life on its surface.
17:45In the future, it may also become a new home for humanity.
17:49But it would take people about 470 years to get to this planet, even if we traveled at the speed
17:55of light, which is impossible due to the laws of physics.
18:01We're traveling through space at the speed of light.
18:04The route from Earth to the Sun at that speed will take only eight minutes.
18:08But it would take us about 35 years to reach our destination, which is, by the way, still very fast.
18:15By comparison, a conventional rocket would take about 600,000 years to make the journey.
18:20And here we are.
18:21It's a star system suspiciously very similar to our own.
18:25And our scientists suspect that life could exist here, just like on Earth.
18:30A red dwarf, 30% the size and weight of the Sun, lies at the heart of this star system.
18:35But these are the planets orbiting the star that interest us most.
18:39The first of these is L9859b.
18:43Its size is somewhere between Earth and Mars, but it's very light.
18:47It's only half the mass of Venus.
18:50But life is impossible on this rocky planet.
18:52It's too close to the star, and it's so hot, you'd burn a cake if you tried baking it on
18:58its surface.
18:59It's about 100 degrees higher than the maximum of your oven.
19:03The planet makes a complete circle around its host star in just two days, compared to 365 for Earth.
19:10And it gets 22 times more energy than we get from the Sun.
19:13So it's not only hot there, but there's a lot of dangerous radiation.
19:18The next planet is 2.8 million miles from its host star.
19:23That's 13 times closer than the distance from Mercury to the Sun.
19:26And it makes a complete revolution around the star in 3.7 days.
19:31But what's interesting is that the planet is 30% bigger than the Earth, and twice as heavy.
19:37So it belongs to the class of super-Earth planets.
19:41Such planets can be rich in water ice, methane, and hydrogen.
19:45These are some of the elements that are necessary for life's existence.
19:49Many scientists believe that it's on such planets that extraterrestrial civilizations can live.
19:54But because of the great weight of the planet, it has a strong gravitational force.
19:59So these civilizations may not be able to fly into space, because it's harder for them to get out of
20:05the gravitational trap of a super-Earth planet.
20:08However, life isn't possible here, because the planet is still too close to the host star.
20:14And just like in our solar system, the two nearest planets are too hot.
20:18But the third planet looks more promising.
20:22L-9859d.
20:24It's almost twice as heavy as the Earth, and 50% bigger.
20:28Scientists have calculated that about a third of its mass could be water.
20:33For comparison, the mass of all water on Earth is only 0.02%.
20:38The presence of water is the main condition for the emergence of life.
20:42But we can only guess where the water might be.
20:45It could be on the surface, but high temperatures can turn large oceans into giant clouds of steam.
20:51But water can also be contained in the groundwater below the surface.
20:55Well, we can't know that for sure yet.
20:58Let's move on to the next planet in the star system.
21:01This newly discovered planet is of the super-Venus class, L-9859e.
21:07It's a rocky planet three times the size of Earth.
21:10The super-Venus class means that the planet is heavy enough to have an atmosphere.
21:15But the conditions there are more like a greenhouse.
21:18Different gases fill the atmosphere there.
21:21Star rays pass through them to the planet's surface, reflect off it, and rise upward.
21:26But the dense gases don't let them leave the atmosphere.
21:29So the planet gets hotter and hotter.
21:32This is the greenhouse effect that we try so hard to avoid on Earth.
21:36On top of that, the stellar wind carries water vapor and other elements from the upper layers of the atmosphere
21:42into outer space.
21:44Life cannot exist on such a planet, nor could it ever originate.
21:48Just like on Earth's twin sister, Venus.
21:51So far, all the planets we've looked at are outside the habitable zone of the host star.
21:57That's the sweet spot at a perfect distance from the star.
22:01Not too close, so that the planet isn't too hot and the water there doesn't evaporate instantly.
22:06And not too far away, so that the planet doesn't look like a cold desert.
22:11And planets B, C, D, and E are too close to the host star.
22:16But there's another hypothetical planet F in this star system, located right in this sweet spot.
22:23This super-Earth candidate is 2.5 times heavier than our home planet.
22:28So we have hopes that it's a rocky world, just like the other planets in this star system.
22:33The weight of planet F is enough to have a dense atmosphere,
22:37and the temperature on its surface should be suitable for water to exist there in liquid form.
22:42The planet makes a complete circle around its host star in 23 days.
22:48Which literally means it's New Year every three weeks.
22:51It isn't very likely, though, that there's a civilization there that celebrates it.
22:56Indeed, the very existence of this planet is very doubtful, because we still have no direct evidence.
23:03All the other planets have been discovered by the transit method.
23:07That's when we point our telescopes directly at a star and watch its brightness change.
23:11When there's a slight drop in the star's brightness, that's when a planet has passed between us and the star.
23:17Like this dot.
23:19We have a short period of time while the planet is in the background of the star to determine its
23:24size and speed.
23:25Sometimes we can observe such transits of Mercury and Venus on the solar disk.
23:30And there are at least 29 potentially habitable planets out there in distant space that can observe Earth in the
23:37same way.
23:38About 1,715 stars within a few hundred light years are perfectly located for it.
23:44Each star has planets around it, but only 29 of them are in the habitable zone.
23:49So there really could be life and an intelligent extraterrestrial civilization out there.
23:54If so, they could point their telescopes toward the sun and see a small dot pass across the solar disk.
24:01And they could have been making these observations for at least the last 5,000 years.
24:06So they could see how our civilization was born and how we evolved.
24:10Moreover, these planets are close enough to pick up our radio signals and even television broadcasts.
24:16But it works both ways.
24:18Radio signals travel through space at the speed of light.
24:22We mastered this technology about 100 years ago.
24:25So if there really is a civilization out there somewhere, we would pick up their signals too.
24:31But so far, it hasn't happened.
24:33So we have no proof of the existence of life on these planets.
24:36The discovery of a star system like L9859 is very important to us because we're always looking for life outside
24:45of our solar system.
24:46And super-Earth-class planets are even better suited for the origin of life than planet Earth itself.
24:52Such planets are sometimes called super-habitable.
24:56So some scientists think that Earth is a good place for life, but not the best.
25:01Super-habitable planets would have to be 30% larger than Earth and twice as heavy.
25:06This would create stronger gravity, which would make the atmosphere on the planet denser and with a higher concentration of
25:12oxygen.
25:13This, in turn, would raise the average temperature on the planet to a perfect 77 degrees Fahrenheit.
25:19So plants would thrive there.
25:21Also, stronger gravity makes the surface of the planet flatter.
25:25So there might be more oceans there than on Earth.
25:28This would make aquatic life much more diverse.
25:30The host star also plays a very important role.
25:35It should be smaller than the Sun.
25:36The bigger the star, the more of its fuel it burns.
25:40This means that the lifespan of such stars is much shorter.
25:43For example, the lifespan of the Sun is about 10 billion years, but a red dwarf can live up to
25:5030 billion years.
25:51More time, more opportunity for the birth of life and evolution.
25:55So far, scientists have discovered 24 super-abundant planets.
25:59But that still doesn't mean that there is life there for real.
26:03But some scientists believe that there are already at least 36 advanced civilizations in our galaxy, besides Earth.
26:10They've searched for similar worlds on the star map.
26:13First, we find stars that look like the Sun among about 100 billion stars throughout the galaxy.
26:19Now we choose from them those that are rich in iron.
26:22Such stars burn at the perfect temperature and help the planets around them gain an iron core and become Earth
26:29-like.
26:29Now let's pick relatively young stars from this pile.
26:32Because when they get older, they expand and either absorb the planets around them or burn them up.
26:38One last thing, let's find planets in this pile that are in the habitable zone of the star.
26:44And voila! 36 worlds may be inhabited by some unknown civilization.
26:49But we won't know for sure until we get in touch with them.