Thomas Chas, Age 12, of Gary, Ind., for his question:
Can our sun support life on the other planets?
A deep sea fish looks too weird for this world. He is adapted to live under pressure in eternal darkness. A magnified potato bug looks like a visitor from space. But these oddities are earthlings. If living things exist on other worlds, they might be still more startling.
You could never count all the different plants and animals that teem on our luxury planet. But all earth's children are made of cells and cells need the same basic items to carry on the chemical processes of living. Life as we know it depends upon the warmth and light which come from the radiant energy of the sun.
Some bacteria can manage without oxygen. But all earthlings must have water liquid water. Our plants and animals depend upon each other and plants must have light. We need enough warmth to melt ice and, directly or indirectly, all earthlings need sunlight. Our quota of solar energy depends upon our distance from the life giving sun.
Energy can be measured in weight and one pound of energy can melt 30 million tons of rock. The sun puts out four million tons of energy every second. Our planet, at a distance of some 93 million miles, gets two tons of every billion tons of the sun's energy. This is enough to keep most, but not all, of our water in a liquid state.
We get more than five times more solar energy than Jupiter, which is five times farther from the sun. On Jupiter and. The more distant planets, water would be solid ice. Mercury, nearest the sun, is too hot and too cold to provide liquid Water. On the side facing the sun, water would boil while on the opposite side it would stay frozen. The dry and dusty face of Venus is hot enough to evaporate large bodies of water. Most of Mars gets enough heat to keep water in a liquid state and if this planet
Has supplies of water and Oxygen, it might support simple forms of earth life.
Life on earth depends upon our quota of solar energy. But ours may not be the only form of life. Perhaps vastly different living things exist in conditions that would be fatal to earthlings, we do not know Earthlings could not live on the hot side of Mercury. On Jupiter they would perish from the icy cold or suffocate in the air of methane and ammonia. But if there are living things on Jupiter, they might need those strong gases, as we need oxygen, and they would feel Quite at home on their icy world.