Posted on 02/24/2017 10:52:26 AM PST by Gamecock
The hunt for signs of life on seven nearby exoplanets will likely begin just a few years from now.
An international research team announced today (Feb. 22) that seven roughly Earth-size alien worlds orbit the small, dim star TRAPPIST-1, which lies just 39 light-years from Earth. (For perspective: Our Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light-years wide. The closest star to the sun, Proxima Centauri, is about 4.2 light-years away.)
Three of these planets appear to be in TRAPPIST-1's "habitable zone," the range of distances where liquid water (and, by extension, life as we know it) could potentially exist on a world's surface. And all seven may be capable of harboring water, given certain atmospheric conditions, study team members said.
This combination of proximity and potential habitability makes TRAPPIST-1 an inviting target in the search for E.T.
"Looking for life elsewhere, this system is probably our best bet as of today," study co-author Brice-Olivier Demory, a professor at the Center for Space and Habitability at the University of Bern in Switzerland, said in a statement.
Follow-up investigation of the TRAPPIST-1 worlds has already begun. For example, last year, observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope revealed that the two innermost planets do not possess large, puffy atmospheres, suggesting that the worlds are rocky rather than gaseous. (The discovery team announced in May 2016 that TRAPPIST-1 hosts three roughly Earth-size planets; the new study, which was published in the journal Nature, identifies a total of seven worlds orbiting the star.)
The team continues to study the TRAPPIST-1 system with Hubble. But such work can characterize atmospheres only in a relatively broad sense; the hunt for possible signatures of life such as oxygen and methane will require new instruments, the researchers said.
Luckily, such gear will be online soon. NASA's $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is scheduled to launch in late 2018, and three huge ground-based instruments — the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) — should start observing the heavens by the early to mid-2020s.
Indeed, the TRAPPIST-1 system will likely be one of the first targets for JWST once the telescope is operational, Nikole Lewis, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and co-leader of the 2016 Hubble study, said during a press briefing today. JWST's observations should allow astronomers to get a good handle on the TRAPPIST-1 planets' atmospheres by the early 2020s, Lewis added.
JWST, E-ELT, GMT and TMT will all be capable of sniffing out "biosignature" gases, their builders have said. (The big ground-based scopes will also be able to image a number of exoplanets directly, but the TRAPPIST-1 worlds aren't good candidates for such photography because they're so close to their parent star, study team members said.)
Detecting either oxygen or methane by itself in a planet's atmosphere wouldn't be compelling evidence of alien life, because both of these gases can be produced by abiotic as well as biotic processes, astronomers have stressed. Finding the two of them together, however, would be a different story.
"They destroy each other," Shawn Domagal-Goldman, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in 2014 during a NASA panel discussion about ancient Earth and habitable exoplanets. "If they're both there together, you know someone is bringing the methane in an atmosphere rich in oxygen, so that's what you're looking for. The most likely explanation is, it's life that's bringing the methane and oxygen to the party."
So astronomers will likely search for methane, oxygen and other gas combos in the skies of the TRAPPIST-1 worlds when JWST and the big ground scopes become operational. But even success on this front would not necessarily provide universally accepted, slam-dunk evidence for life, said Michaël Gillon of the University of Liège in Belgium, leader of the new TRAPPIST-1 study.
"We will never be 100 percent sure until we go there, or get something," Gillon told reporters Tuesday (Feb. 21). (By "get something," he meant a signal from an alien civilization.)
A robotic probe won't be zooming through the TRAPPIST-1 system anytime soon, but this prospect is not out of the question. Last year, a team of scientists and engineers announced the $100 million Breakthrough Starshot project, which aims to develop the technology required to blast tiny, sail-equipped probes through space at up to 20 percent the speed of light using powerful lasers.
If Breakthrough Starshot pans out, such spacecraft could conceivably make it to the TRAPPIST-1 system about 200 years after lifting off.
Last year, a team of scientists and engineers announced the $100 million Breakthrough Starshot project, which aims to develop the technology required to blast tiny, sail-equipped probes through space at up to 20 percent the speed of light using powerful lasers.If Breakthrough Starshot pans out, such spacecraft could conceivably make it to the TRAPPIST-1 system about 200 years after lifting off.
All this ‘space talk’ is to get the heat off of John Podesta and the ‘spirit cooking’...Rush said it earlier in his program today...
The State of California just issued them all drivers license s
The bad news is we might slam into the planet at 134,123,326 miles per hour, thus answering the question if life is out there.
My predictions:
1. very thin or non-existent atmospheres on any of these planets, all stripped by massive solar flares from their red dwarf sun (red dwarfs do that)
2. one or more may have a constantly replenishing high-sulfur atmosphere from high volcanic activity, an atmosphere that is constantly being stripped away and then built up again by volcanic activity
Public funds are better used for ‘finding’ human life in space- ie: by putting it there.
Obviously Man’s future will not be at the bottom of a gravity well.
The sun that they orbit is a brown dwarf. It puts out 0.04% of the heat that our own Sun does. In order to be in the “habitable zone” where water is liquid, they orbit at 0.01 AU from their sun, where Earth is 1AU and Mercury about 0.3 AU from our sun. A “year” on these planets is 1 day, 2 days, 3 days, 6 days for the inner few. They are so close to the “brown dwarf” sun that they experience huge tidal forces that force one side of the planet to stay facing their sun. They are also so close that they are exposed to all the “flare particles” released from magnetic activity, so it would suggest one side of each “planet” is scorched and radioactive, while the other side is figid and frozen. Not exactly hospitable.
They looked for signatures of Hydrogen and Helium and saw none, which suggests that none of the planets is a “gas giant” like Jupiter, and also none of them has an extended oxygen or CO2 atmosphere like Earth or Venus. Many such “solar systems” with “earthlike” planets around “brown dwarf” planets have been seen already, with little hope of life on them. But what makes this one special is that there are 7 such planets all strung out in a line. The “perhaps there’s life” is a red herring to make this newsworthy.
- Rob Sheldon
I used to believe a real believer in life on other planets. But looking at the math and science it’s impossible for life to spring forth spontaneously. And if God seeded other planets then he could have done it anywhere and made it in conformance with the conditions on the planet. Water or not wouldn’t matter.
Right, because space.com would really be covering that kind of crap otherwise.
OH did I forget the /s???
Which is 234,000,000,000,000 miles. Why is this being reported as if it's just down the block?
Interesting. Never ever thought like that before.....very rational-—as is a “Designer of Man” (God) being way more rational than the disproven Macro-Evolutionary theory which is forced onto toddlers as “fact”. Atheism is a removal from the Design in Nature (Science). It is totally irrational and stupid.
There is a Reason why Christianity created the highest level of brilliance with the Age of Reason/Modern Science/elimination of Slavery/pederasty/incest/misogyny, etc. as a “good” which is STILL good in EVERY other worldview other than TRUE Christianity.
It created the highest level of abstract thinking, the US Constitution and Bill of God-Given Natural Rights. It is the most just, profound philosophy where our Reality was the LEAST warped and most true.
Now, with the Marxist/communist control of all our information, universities, etc., the move into total irrationality and removal from Reason and Natural Law (our Constitution) is necessary to make us into little tribal mindsets where we can’t even understand male/female paradigm any more. All the two year olds I worked with were capable of knowing the differences between boys and girls. It was the basis of identity formation and Reason and Logic-—which is intentionally being destroyed by the Marxist indoctrination systems (publik skools—group “think” factories).
To destroy Common Sense and Reason in little chlldren is very easy with their TV “programming” and control of curricula and it is their goal and why they focus on “aliens” and other irrational subjects so they can totally remove our Minds from Reality (Truth (God)). Ignorance is slavery and vice (perversions) makes slaves of everyone and collapses all civil cultures.
At 39 light years distant, and chance any of the planets is Serpo?
CA....
That.
39 light years away?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zefram_Cochrane
btw in the fictional account, warp drive is discovered in the year 2063
39 light years away?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zefram_Cochrane
btw in the fictional account, warp drive is discovered in the year 2063
Last year, a team of scientists and engineers announced the $100 million Breakthrough Starshot project, which aims to develop the technology required to blast tiny, sail-equipped probes through space at up to 20 percent the speed of light using powerful lasers.
If Breakthrough Starshot pans out, such spacecraft could conceivably make it to the TRAPPIST-1 system about 200 years after lifting off.
...
Nice, but will it be able to stop?
But looking at the math and science it’s impossible for life to spring forth spontaneously.
...
It think the evidence points to it being very improbable, but not impossible. Impossible is one of those words like “never.”
While abiogenesis seems to have only occurred once and there being only one tree of life, abiogenesis appears improbable, however, abiogenesis did occur early in the history of the Earth, which is evidence for it being probable given a certain type of environment.
I think the word impossible is correct. Abiogenesis is a quaint little theory that emerged in a time when scientists thought flies spontaneously appeared out of raw meat and fleas from dust. It's a holdover because science refuses to recognize that life from non-life can only happen if there's a creator.
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