Tides could set alien biological clocks ticking

• Autores: Abigail Beall
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3136, 2017, pág. 7
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Worlds with a permanent day and night side aren't obvious places to look for extraterrestrial life. Apart from having extremes of temperature, such planets would make it hard for a biological clock to get going. Now, Avi Loeb and Manasvi Lingam at Harvard University have shown that if these worlds have oceans, tides could be what life gets into sync with its world. Loeb and Lingam's study shows tides could be the timekeeper. If a planet that always keeps the same face pointing at its star has an elliptical orbit, the change in distance as it circles would create the back and forth pull needed for tides.