All around the Milky Way are stars that look like our own sun. A new study is finding that any planet orbiting those stars may be hotter and more dynamic than Earth. This is because the interiors of any terrestrial plant in these systems are likely around 25% warmer then Earth. This would make them more geologically active and more likely to hold water to support life, atleat in a microbial form. These preliminary findings come from geologists and astronomers at Ohio State University who teamed up to search for alien life in a new way.
These researchers studied eight "solar twins" of our sun, stars that closely match the sun in size, age, and overall composition. This is all criteria to help measure the amounts of radioactive elements they contain. Those stars or suns came from a dataset recorded by the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher spectrometer at the European Southern Observatory in Chile. The researchers searched the solar twins for elements like thorium and uranium, which are essential to Earth's plate tectonics because they warm our planets interior. Plate tectonics helps maintain water on the surface of our Earth, so it can be said that the existence of plate tectonics on one of these solar twins could be an indicator of a planet's cabability to sustain life. Seven out of the eight stars studied so far appear to contain much more thorium than our sun. However this research is still only preliminary and more research is being conducted.
Aliens may exist after all, and Star Trek may be a posibility in the future. "Bolding going where no man has gone before." It would be rather intersting to see where this research goes, and if they will ever be able to find a solar system that has life, microbial or possibly even human.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121203145844.htm
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