Scientists Find a New Way To Search for Habitable Exoplanets (vice.com) 11
An anonymous reader shares a report: Earthlings are lucky to live near a relatively stable Sun, which has enabled life on our planet to emerge and thrive over the past four billion years. While many worlds in our galaxy might contain the right ingredients to support life, though, a lot of them could be stuck with a more volatile star that prevents them from becoming -- or remaining -- habitable. To get a better grip on which types of star systems might be most likely to host aliens, a pair of scientists at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) Center for Space Science have observed space weather around nearly 500 stars, according to a study published on Sunday in the journal Monthly Notices of Royal Astronomical Society: Letters. The results suggest that planets subjected to occasional but intense flares are probably more hospitable to life than worlds that receive a constant flux of radiation and low-energy flares, which blows their protective atmospheres away. Planetary habitability "is one of the most important concepts in exoplanet science" and "is defined as the zone around a star in which a planet is able to sustain liquid water on its surface," said research scientist Dimitra Atri and graduate student Shane Carberry Mogan, both at NYUAD, in the study. "While this approach is useful to identify potentially hospitable planets around stars, it fails to take into account the damaging aspect of stellar activity on such planets," the pair added. "The main goal of this paper is to understand how stellar luminosity and flares can lead to atmospheric escape on [habitable zone] planets on long time-scales and how these losses impact planetary habitability."
Alternate Techniques (Score:2, Funny)
Have you tried knocking and asking politely
Re:Alternate Techniques (Score:4, Funny)
Have you tried knocking and asking politely
Or send a registered letter via USPS with a self-addressed stamped envelope. The registration will show when it's delivered and the SASE makes it easy for any inhabitants to write back. Of course, this assumes the USPS hasn't removed the post boxes on the remote planets...
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There was a funny, short, sci-fi story about a guy who did just that, and got a response. I think it went well for him.
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"Mail Supremacy" by Hayford Peirce
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Who told you about the Universal Space Postal Service?
Code yellow. I repeat, code yellow on fahrbot-bot.
Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy? (Score:2)
They are all in the appendix.
Until we develop FTL ability (Score:1)
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In theory, if we can build a ship that can constantly accelerate at 1G you'll end up with a ship that can get humans to some pretty decent distances within *their* lifespan. Now, beyond the local neighborhood of stars, whilst we could still in theory get there within the astronauts lifespan, back at home we might have had centuries pass. But its still *possible*,
Of course how you deal with the rocket equasion and bring along enough fuel to accelerate at 1G for potentially decades , thats a hairier question.
Direct imaging ftw (Score:1)
Rather pointless effort. (Score:2)
5 light years or 500, exoplanets are practically unreachable and, without "new physics", will remain so forever.
It will take more energy than the total of humanity has used to send a small space probe even to the nearest star in a time frame that is meaningful.
And a small, unmanned space probes are all the humanity can offer today, and in the next century or so, space opera movies notwithstanding.