Prime time for the Sol System: When would alien explorers find the most water?

[autumnalequinox]

Early geological history will always be riddled with speculation.  Nothing is concrete and nothing will ever be certain.  But regardless, we have some good theories and let's assume the ones most favorable to water/pre-biota are correct.

There is something I've been trying to pin down and thats the time period of our Solar System where alien explorers would find a sort of "maximum habitability".  I don't mean actual life but I am talking about thick atmosphere and surface water.  I suspect it would be about 1 billion years after formation (give or take ALOT).

1.  Venus would still have oceans and it's atmosphere has not yet become the deadly blanket of CO2 yet.  Sure, it will be warm and rotate slowly but beneath the evaporating oceans and mean surface temperatures over 100C there could be something going on under those evaporating oceans.

2.  Earth may already be inhabited by primitive life, depending on the theories (especially Cool Early Earth).  Either way, it has a thick atmosphere and significant oceans.

3.  Mars may still be partially habitable as well.  It may possess a large northern shallow sea, volcanic activity, and an atmosphere not yet lost to space.

Some explorers, looking for a new home, may see this Solar System and think "JACKPOT!" now there's some easy terraforming (or xenoforming) for our oxygen breathing, water-loving, carbon-based hypothetical aliens.

Even Titan may still be relatively warm, retaining much heat from it's formation (and plenty of radioisotopes still going) and have some H2O-ammonia pools on the surface.  This is just a prediction of my own, however, as we still aren't sure if Titan was formed from Saturn's disc or from a series of impacts.  If impacts, this makes a warm Titan more likely (at least for a short chunk of geological time).

Sure the sun is cooler but greenhouse effects and residual energy are helpful in this situation.

It's an interesting thought to truly see through time and realize that we truly live in a different place now vs. then.  And in the future, as the sun swells, the Outer Planets may be home to a new type of (temporary) habitability as Titan, Europa, Callisto, and even Pluto thaw for a few hundred million years!  In fact, we may be situated in the least habitable period of our Solar System's long history and future!

If anyone else has backgrounds in planetary science/geology or an interest feel free to chime in.  This could all be wrong, after all I'm not a scientist I just read alot.

[PB666]

14 minutes ago, autumnalequinox said:

Early geological history will always be riddled with speculation.  Nothing is concrete and nothing will ever be certain.  But regardless, we have some good theories and let's assume the ones most favorable to water/pre-biota are correct.

There is something I've been trying to pin down and thats the time period of our Solar System where alien explorers would find a sort of "maximum habitability".  I don't mean actual life but I am talking about thick atmosphere and surface water.  I suspect it would be about 1 billion years after formation (give or take ALOT).

1.  Venus would still have oceans and it's atmosphere has not yet become the deadly blanket of CO2 yet.  Sure, it will be warm and rotate slowly but beneath the evaporating oceans and mean surface temperatures over 100C there could be something going on under those evaporating oceans.

2.  Earth may already be inhabited by primitive life, depending on the theories (especially Cool Early Earth).  Either way, it has a thick atmosphere and significant oceans.

3.  Mars may still be partially habitable as well.  It may possess a large northern shallow sea, volcanic activity, and an atmosphere not yet lost to space.

Some explorers, looking for a new home, may see this Solar System and think "JACKPOT!" now there's some easy terraforming (or xenoforming) for our oxygen breathing, water-loving, carbon-based hypothetical aliens.

Even Titan may still be relatively warm, retaining much heat from it's formation (and plenty of radioisotopes still going) and have some H2O-ammonia pools on the surface.  This is just a prediction of my own, however, as we still aren't sure if Titan was formed from Saturn's disc or from a series of impacts.  If impacts, this makes a warm Titan more likely (at least for a short chunk of geological time).

Sure the sun is cooler but greenhouse effects and residual energy are helpful in this situation.

It's an interesting thought to truly see through time and realize that we truly live in a different place now vs. then.  And in the future, as the sun swells, the Outer Planets may be home to a new type of (temporary) habitability as Titan, Europa, Callisto, and even Pluto thaw for a few hundred million years!  In fact, we may be situated in the least habitable period of our Solar System's long history and future!

If anyone else has backgrounds in planetary science/geology or an interest feel free to chime in.  This could all be wrong, after all I'm not a scientist I just read alot.

You mean like they settled on out ancient earth and became Archean, that the settled on our ancient earth and were eaten by Archean, that they attempted to terriform earth and failed at the very first biological step and Earth preceded on its evolution as if life occurred by neobiogenesis, or that they intentionally sent a spore ship with one archeaon prototype on board?

As I will repeat, science gives no clue as to what cause biogenesis on Earth, but since that event occurred life has evolved on Earth by physical laws intrinsic to our solar system, there does not appear to be an outside hand involved in evolution.

 

BTW, a species on its way to extinction realizing that its hopeless to try to go to the stars with such infrastructure might decide to send out seed ships in the direction of planets with archeotypical bacteria, constructed in a lab, that can survive under a wide variety of conditions and evolve. Therefore circumventing the problem of carrying themselves across space and hoping some other evolved species can figure out what to do. Another example if the last of the species was about to be destroyed by robots, they decide to do this in self preservation of some genetic material. The may have sent out seed ships to terriform, but they themselves never survived long enough to reach the colony, or something might have happened on Earth that delayed terriforming, such as the great bombardment, thinking that it was over they might have concluded earth was sterile and ignored it, as that star passed to a distant part of the milky way.

Less likely maybe's.

Maybe they also saw the great asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs as a risk, maybe they see a future asteroid coming toward us, and have decided to wait until after all the dust has settled.

Maybe a space fairing culture sees colonization as a hassle and prefers to inhabit systems with small bolloids around long lived red stars. Since these are often not easily visible they are great places to keep track of what local yellow star systems are doing, like us.

Edited June 2, 2016 by PB666

[autumnalequinox]

On 6/2/2016 at 1:42 PM, PB666 said:

You mean like they settled on out ancient earth and became Archean, that the settled on our ancient earth and were eaten by Archean, that they attempted to terriform earth and failed at the very first biological step and Earth preceded on its evolution as if life occurred by neobiogenesis, or that they intentionally sent a spore ship with one archeaon prototype on board?

As I will repeat, science gives no clue as to what cause biogenesis on Earth, but since that event occurred life has evolved on Earth by physical laws intrinsic to our solar system, there does not appear to be an outside hand involved in evolution.

 

BTW, a species on its way to extinction realizing that its hopeless to try to go to the stars with such infrastructure might decide to send out seed ships in the direction of planets with archeotypical bacteria, constructed in a lab, that can survive under a wide variety of conditions and evolve. Therefore circumventing the problem of carrying themselves across space and hoping some other evolved species can figure out what to do. Another example if the last of the species was about to be destroyed by robots, they decide to do this in self preservation of some genetic material. The may have sent out seed ships to terriform, but they themselves never survived long enough to reach the colony, or something might have happened on Earth that delayed terriforming, such as the great bombardment, thinking that it was over they might have concluded earth was sterile and ignored it, as that star passed to a distant part of the milky way.

Less likely maybe's.

Maybe they also saw the great asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs as a risk, maybe they see a future asteroid coming toward us, and have decided to wait until after all the dust has settled.

Maybe a space fairing culture sees colonization as a hassle and prefers to inhabit systems with small bolloids around long lived red stars. Since these are often not easily visible they are great places to keep track of what local yellow star systems are doing, like us.

I probably shouldn't have fixated so hard on aliens and terraforming.  It was just a convenient way to create a potential "observer" to this much more habitable early Solar System.  It's more a hypothetical thought experiment and less a realistic possibility.  I just wanted to talk about how any outside observer would see our Solar System at about the 1 billion year mark and how interesting it would be.

Actual aliens affecting our Solar System's history/formation in Deep Time is far beyond the realm of evidence for me, personally.  I'm not saying it didn't or couldn't happen (or couldn't happen in the future) but I find it unlikely.

[PB666]

59 minutes ago, autumnalequinox said:

I probably shouldn't have fixated so hard on aliens and terraforming.  It was just a convenient way to create a potential "observer" to this much more habitable early Solar System.  It's more a hypothetical thought experiment and less a realistic possibility.  I just wanted to talk about how any outside observer would see our Solar System at about the 1 billion year mark and how interesting it would be.

Actual aliens affecting our Solar System's history/formation in Deep Time is far beyond the realm of evidence for me, personally.  I'm not saying it didn't or couldn't happen (or couldn't happen in the future) but I find it unlikely.

Was there any aliens in our galaxy four billin years ago, remember that we travel through space time. 

 

If youvwere asking whether if i had 2 dozen telescopes and the confirmed an Earth sun combo would i be interested in investigating it. I would have every telescope and deep space craft mission directed at trying to figure out if it would be a good target. That has nothing to do with my spaceships making it here. The questions regarded quantum teleportstion and entanglement were put forth 80 to 90 years ago, they've only started to be answered now,mand there are many caveots of QFT and QCD that have not been explored.. Dependending on how hard the technical feat is, it might take more effort than its worth or a considerably long time to answer. I mean if i wanted to cheaply seed sol system with life i would embed the late bombardment asteroids with survivable packages and let them do the dirty work of working out what should, would, could survive. 

The critical threshold is that if i am powerful enough to move my body from here to Nova Sol A and still be alive when i got there, tell you what, i don't need Earth. You would find me in the asteroid belt with robots redirecting comets from the kuiper belt to the outer asteroid belt where i intercept and stabilize them. I might have moved through Sol taken the objects i wanted, goten all the water i needed from comets, and because your ancestors were still clubbing lions with hand-axes, or worse, you never knew i past by, of course i passed by, everyone knows Earth is fated to be destroyed by a vogon constructor fleet inorder to build a hyperspace bypass. 

[Bill Phil]

Imagine a cocktail of organic molecules. It's getting energy from a heat source somewhere. Given enough time, abiogenesis is inevitable. Perhaps more than once. 

But I think this is about biogenesis, from an extraterrestrial intelligent source?

[kerbiloid]

If Venus ever had real oceans, rather than hot and dense volcanic mist, consisiting of CO2 and water steam, with some lakes of salty condensate below.

If Titan was indeed warm, it should have lost much of its cryogenic fluids. As it haven't, probably it wasn't much warmer than now.

[autumnalequinox]

On 6/3/2016 at 2:57 AM, kerbiloid said:

If Venus ever had real oceans, rather than hot and dense volcanic mist, consisiting of CO2 and water steam, with some lakes of salty condensate below.

If Titan was indeed warm, it should have lost much of its cryogenic fluids. As it haven't, probably it wasn't much warmer than now.

As far as Venus goes I know it's currently debatable whether it had oceans at all.  There's been evidence both pro and con for them.  We would need some extensive surface exploration by a mobile rover of some sort to find out.  

And for Titan that's probalbly true.  Unless after formation it swept up additional material.  And by "warm" I mean something far below freezing but perhaps a short time where the temperature is high enough for only a mildly crusted over ammonia-water ocean.  Maybe something that interacted with the atmosphere before finally solidifying.  Essentially a cryogenic version of Earth's early "lava oceans".

[Green Baron]

I'm not that much into alien explorers and terraforming cause compared to earth history aliens are a pretty young occurrence; they exist roughly since the beginning of the last century (how comes ?) :-)

But i'm a bit into earth history, enough to judge wikipedia articles on the subject. Prokaryotic life (e. g. Cyanobacteria) is present since not less than 3,5 billion years, probably 4.1, since the beginning of the archaean (stratigraphic table), performing photosynthesis (without oxygen). This is life with a metabolism, not just glibbering molecules.

I'm as sorry as possible, but aliens were (and are) not needed for the process.

:-)

Edited June 4, 2016 by Green Baron

[DDE]

Why bother going down a gravity well when you have Saturn's rings?