A new theoretical study conducted by scientists working with data from the Hubble telescope showed that most likely, the Earth became the very first inhabited planet in the developing Universe.
According to this data, when our solar system originated 4.6 billion years ago, there were only 8% of the potentially habitable planets in the universe. This number will grow even when the Sun engulfs our planet. The main part of these planets (namely 92%) has yet to be "born".
“We aimed to understand the earth's place in the context of the rest of the universe,” said study author Peter Behroozi of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. "Compared to all the planets that ever form in the Universe, the Earth was quite early."
Scientists with the help of "Hubble" tried to create the so-called "family album" of the Galaxy - a chronicle of the formation of stars as the universe develops. The data showed that stars were emerging very actively 10 billion years ago, but quite small amounts of helium and hydrogen were involved in this process.
Today, star formation is slower, but it involves a large amount of gases, so the researchers concluded that many more celestial bodies will form in the future for a long time.
"After the Big Bang, there is still enough material left to create more planets in the Milky Way and beyond," explains study co-author Molly Peeples.
The work of the Kepler satellite telescope has shown that Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone (that is, at the ideal distance from their star to allow water bodies to form on the surface) are widespread in our galaxy.
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Scientists believe that about one billion Earth-sized planets exist in the Milky Way galaxy, and a significant part of them are rocky, that is, with a solid surface. These data will, of course, expand if they include the other 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe.
That is, the likelihood that Earth-like objects will appear in the habitable zone of other planetary systems is very, very high. It is believed that the last star will burn for another 100 trillion years - enough time for organic life to arise on the planet.
The researchers argue that future "Earths" are likely to appear in giant galaxy clusters, as well as in dwarf galaxies that still use gas to form planetary systems accompanying stars. Our Milky Way galaxy, in turn, used up much more gas than should have been left for future star formation.
However, despite its too early appearance, one of the significant advantages of our civilization, which arose by astronomical standards at the beginning of the evolution of the Universe, is our ability to use powerful telescopes in order to trace the lineage from the Big Bang through the early evolution of galaxies.
The evidence that the Big Bang took place and the subsequent evolution of the cosmos is encoded in light, that is, electromagnetic radiation. However, it is gradually being erased due to the rapid expansion of space. The civilizations of the future, most likely, will no longer be able to receive this data.
The study was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
