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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday January 03 2018, @03:17PM   Printer-friendly
from the earth-2.0 dept.

A study has found that the two outermost TRAPPIST-1 exoplanets are the most likely to be able to retain their atmospheres:

The last thing the planets around the red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 need is abundant sunshine. Active eruptions and flares from the star would wreak havoc on the rocky planets in orbit. But fortunately, the outer planets might be safe from this barrage of high-energy space weather.

According to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences [DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1708010115] [DX], the outer planets of the system could cling on to their atmospheres. This finding is despite previous studies showing that TRAPPIST-1 might be so active that it blows away planetary atmospheres.

[...] The new results show that while all seven planets could retain their atmosphere, the more likely scenario is that the outermost two, -1g and -1h, have the best odds (and -1e and -1f have a weaker chance.)

This could be resolved by JWST observations.


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  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday January 04 2018, @03:22PM (2 children)

    by Immerman (3985) on Thursday January 04 2018, @03:22PM (#617721)

    Quite true about hardiness - here. Put them on a planet where that hardiness gives them a substantial advantage over everything else, and they'll likely end up being the progenitors of a large portion of the global population, rather than niche players relegated to the fringes.

    I said nothing about anything becoming "suddenly big". And absolutely big brains are expensive, which is probably why we don't see them often. But the non-scaling mutation didn't give us big brains - it just improved the cost/benefit ratio so that later mutations for bigger brains were less expensive than they otherwise would have been. Plenty of primates out there with tiny walnut brains - they have the "cheap big brains" mutation as well, they just don't get as much use of it. For the first individual to develop it, it probably actually made their brain smaller(cheaper) at the same intelligence, or smarter at the same size, or somewhere in between. Something that gave it enough of an advantage that it and its descendants could out-compete the rest of the troop.

    Parrots can make tools (e.g. tearing of a splinter of wood and intentionally bending the end into a hook) Ravens can make tools and solve multi-step brain teasers to get at appealing treats (I.e. solve puzzle A to get piece to solve B,etc,etc,etc, to solve F and get treat). Dolphins make bubble-nets for fishing among many other tools, and can quickly grasp how to use more sophisticated tools when presented with them in the lab. What *exactly* do you mean by smart? It's actually a really slippery term when you try to precisely define it. One of the big things modern biology is making us realize is that humans aren't actually all that special intellectually - we have "more" brains, and as they say, quantity is it's own quality, but we don't appear to actually have any particular intellectual traits beyond that that set us apart.

    My point is that lots of other social, tool-using species have bumped up against the "bigger brains aren't worth it" line - what really set us apart and let us advance so much further was that incremental increases in our brain size came at a lower metabolic cost, so that the "bigger brains aren't worth it" line was drawn at a much more intelligent point - far enough that we were able to develop more sophisticated technology and communicate it between generations - fire, stone tools, etc. At which point we became something more than just smart animals, we could build upon the intellectual accomplishments of our ancestors, which made bigger brains even more valuable, since the insights of the elders today could continue to benefit their descendants in perpetuity.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @04:53PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @04:53PM (#617778)

    incremental increases in our brain size came at a lower metabolic cost

    I'm not sure what you mean. A human brain takes roughly 12% of our energy. It's not more efficient per neuron than say a lizard brain.

    And birds who have to dig stubborn bugs out of trees and tight spots to feed themselves indeed have decent physical tool problem solving abilities. But they don't have a sophisticated social network, and are thus more or less tool savants.

    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday January 04 2018, @10:07PM

      by Immerman (3985) on Thursday January 04 2018, @10:07PM (#618001)

      Hmm, you seem to be correct - I had been operating under the assumption that calories/gram remained relatively constant, but it does appear that calories/neuron is the more constant guide. (still not constant, but nothing compared to the variation in neuron density between species.)

      That being the case, I can think of two other advantages that smaller neurons bestow:

      1) Brain size at birth - humans are already born "prematurely" compared to other primates so that our skulls can fit through the birth canal, without small neurons it would require much more major skeletal modifications to allow birthing of big-brained babies.
      2) Signal transmission delays are diminished - at ~3x the weight of a human brain, an elephant brain with the same amount of neurons as our own would average ~44% longer transmission times between neurons.

      It might also make complex neural structures lest costly to make.1

      Anyway, I need to reexamine some my my assumptions. Thanks.