Astronomers Find Planets Around Weird Binary Star 69
The Bad Astronomer writes "Exoplanets orbiting binary stars have been discovered before, but NN Serpentis is a weird system even in that category. One star is a red dwarf in an incredibly tight orbit around a white dwarf. The white dwarf used to be a star like the Sun but became a red giant as it died, engulfing the red dwarf. Now the two orbit each other almost as closely as the Moon orbits the Earth. Explaining how the two newly detected exoplanets survived such an event is very difficult, and astronomers think they may have actually formed from the material expelled by the star as it died."
The view must be nice (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cue The Carbon-Based Life (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The view must be nice (Score:4, Insightful)
And of course, all of this means that we are getting better estimates for the Drake equation as well. Everything used to be a complete unknown. But now the major room for variation are the biological variables not the astronomical ones.
OTOH, since the biological variables are such unknowns, the equation is still largely useless for any real-life calculation. I mean, Fi (the fraction that develop intelligent life) can range anywhere from almost 0 to almost 100% and L (the length of time such a civilization releases a signal to space) could be very long, but could also be extremely short, since we now see that on Earth most signals are not lost to space because the signals are focused to satellites and back to Earth.The time that we release signals to space was actually quite short and is almost over.
Re:Cue The Carbon-Based Life (Score:5, Insightful)
Requisite
Re:The view must be nice (Score:2, Insightful)
In an Infinite Universe Everything Is Possible (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cue The Carbon-Based Life (Score:3, Insightful)
I think from an "extraterrestrial life" point of view, there wouldn't be a lot of difference between finding something like ants and finding something like us.
I've always felt the "will it develop intelligence" thing is overstated. Most scientists expect that if we find life on Mars or wherever, it will be in the form of some simple single-celled bacteria-like creature, perhaps simple multi-celled plant slime at best. If we discover large, complex eukaryotic life, with limbs, internal organs, hunting, mating, building nests- that's massive.
The leap from bacteria to ant is so unbelievably colossal as to be mind boggling, even in the context of life here on Earth. The leap from nests made of mud to nests made of brick, or tools made of twig scraps to tools powered by batteries, seems almost a trivial baby-step by comparison.