Alien Planet Research Paper

Luke M Coffey
Lauren Humphreys
Honors Geology 2
April 21, 2016
Alien Planet Kepler-452b
Our Milky Way Galaxy is filled with exoplanets—statistically speaking at least one for each of the hundreds of billions of stars in the galaxy. An astonishing finding is that the most common type of planet in our galaxy are those with sizes between those of Earth and Neptune. This has become a new class of planet that is neither terrestrial nor giant and one without an accepted theory for its formation. Planets on orbits between the hot planets and the cold planets are also known, and of particular interest is the “habitable zone,” or “Goldilocks zone,” the zone around a star where a rocky planet with a thin atmosphere, heated by its star, can have liquid
For instance, modern “alien” cephalopods might currently dwell in its oceans. A cephalopod is any member of the molluscan class Cephalopoda, and these exclusively marine animals are characterized by their bilateral body symmetry, prominent heads, and a set of arms or tentacles modified from the primitive molluscan foot. Cephalopods are most common in shallow near-shore environments, but they have also been found in deeper waters. They were thought to have arisen from within the tryblidiid monoplacophoran clade. However, genetic studies suggest that they are more basal, forming a sister group to the Scaphopoda but otherwise basal to all other major mollusc classes. These would give rise to modern Octopuses, squid and cuttlefish. These marine animals have all shown themselves to be adept at escaping through spaces as small as a coin, in case they ever need to survive environmental dangers or predators. They are constrained only by their beaks, the only inflexible part of their bodies. This evolution of the beak may point to a common ancestor, or a future descent in modification in certain animals like birds and other aviating creatures with
This includes whales, dolphins, and porpoises. Even though these marine creatures live in water and look like giant fish, they have a very different anatomy. Whales, in particular, can be analyzed for their uniqueness. They have placentas and give live births, feed milk to their young, are warm blooded, and do not have gills but instead have two fully developed lungs. Whales do not have noses like mammals, but have blow holes instead, just like all cetaceans. These animals have different sets of blowholes, but they all have two nasal passages in their skulls inside the head. Whales even have hair on their heads, just like land mammals. They strangely also have arm, hand, wrist, and finger bones inside their front flippers, just like bats, hippos, and humans have in their front appendages. These modern whales do not have hind legs but do have a small set of bones where the hind legs should be, a sign of this evolution. These bones almost appear to be shrunken hip, thigh, and shin bones, even with ball and socket joints. The cetacean embryos start with arm and leg buds, but over time the arms grow into fins and the leg buds stop growing. The embryos also have the two front nostrils, but overtime these move to the top of the head becoming the