Click on image for full size
Perfect Vision Graphics
Life as we know it on earth requires a certain environment to survive. Life on Earth can survive in temperatures of -130 degrees to +130 degrees. Even so, there are creatures on earth which seem to be able to survive in harsh environments, where the temperatures are very cold, where there is little water or oxygen, or in extreme pressures at the bottom of the sea. Archaea is a form of bacterial life which lives inside volcanoes, and inside rocks miles down within the Earth. It is environments like these which are similar to those found on other planets.
Sophisticated life forms are relative newcomers on Earth compared to bacteria, having developed over the last 500 million years as opposed to billions of years of bacterial life. They arrived later because the Earth proved to be a healthy environment for life over the long term. Because the environment of other planets is more primitive, life on other planets may be primitive and unsophisticated, like early life on Earth. Link to the Exploratour on Life on Earth, at the bottom of this page, to learn more about that subject.
Here we present a look an the environments of some places in the solar system; Mercury, Venus, Mars present and past, Jupiter, Io, Europa, Saturn, Titan, other moons, Uranus, Neptune, Triton, Pluto, comets, and interstellar space. To continue with the tour press the forward link in the upper corner of this page.
This is page 1 of 20
Shop Windows to the Universe Science Store!
Our online store
includes issues of NESTA's quarterly journal, The Earth Scientist
, full of classroom activities on different topics in Earth and space science, ranging from seismology
, rocks and minerals
, and Earth system science