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Scientists are uncovering bizarre exoplanets that challenge everything we know about habitability. From super-Earths with crushing gravity to tidally locked planets with scorching hot and frozen hemispheres, these extreme worlds could give rise to lifeforms unlike anything on Earth. In this video, we explore the scientific possibilities of extraterrestrial life—how gravity, atmosphere, and star types could shape truly alien evolution. Could we find snake-like creatures on high-gravity worlds, black-leaved plants around red dwarf stars, or ocean-dwelling bioluminescent life on Europa-like moons? The possibilities are endless, and the science is fascinating!
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Today’s script comes from the brilliant astronomy author: Colin Stuart.
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Certain environmental factors would work together to determine what forms complex organisms would take on an exoplanet or moon. On a high gravity world, the standard animal body plan could call for six limbs rather than the four limbs that are standard on Earth, and or the legs might be thicker (think the legs of elephants and rhinos). Alternatively, the majority of animals could be serpentine, with no legs at all because slithering could be an easier form of locomotive than walking. The high gravity could place a hard limit (or at least a delay) on.how advanced an extraterrestrial race evolving on such a planet could get in terms of technology, like for instance, space travel might be almost impossible for those beings, meaning no satellite communication or any of the other technologies edged on by space exploration.
On a tidally-locked “eyeball earth”, creatures that spend the majority of their time if not all their time on the permanent night side of the planet could have eyes that see in infrared or some other part of the non-visible light spectrum. Even those living on the permanent starlit side of the planet might have partial infrared vision, as habitable tidally locked planets would orbit faintest of red dwarves. Plants on such a world wouldn’t be green, they’d likely be dark purple, dark blue or even black to absorb all the sunlight they can.
And all this is but the beginning.