Posted on 11/05/2013 6:51:23 AM PST by BenLurkin
All of the potentially habitable planets found in their survey are around K stars, which are cooler and slightly smaller than the sun, Petigura said. But the team’s analysis shows that the result for K stars can be extrapolated to G stars like the sun.
...
If the stars in the Kepler field are representative of stars in the solar neighborhood, then the nearest (Earth-size) planet is expected to orbit a star that is less than 12 light-years from Earth and can be seen by the unaided eye. Future instrumentation to image and take spectra of these Earths need only observe a few dozen nearby stars to detect a sample of Earth-size planets residing in the habitable zones of their host stars.
“For NASA, this number – that every fifth star has a planet somewhat like Earth – is really important, because successor missions to Kepler will try to take an actual picture of a planet, and the size of the telescope they have to build depends on how close the nearest Earth-size planets are,” said Andrew Howard, astronomer with the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii. “An abundance of planets orbiting nearby stars simplifies such follow-up missions.”
(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...
The vast majority of stars are red dwarfs and there are advantages and disadvantages for life around those.
One advantages is that they’re very stable and seem nearly eternal as far as the lifespan of stars is concerned. A disadvantage is the fact that they’re very cool so a planet would need to orbit close which presents a different set of problems.
Habitability is a rather subjective term anyway. We humans do lave in a fairly narrow band of environmental conditions but we’re also an amazingly adaptable species. Its likely that we can expand our habitability requirements quite a bit.
There are numerous Class M planets in the galaxy. Most of them have humanoid inhabitants. And these aliens all speak English. They also have attractive females who catch the eye of Captain Kirk.
For you to poo-poo and deny...
They may feel the same way about us!
lol
:)
Next you’ll call in Salamander for support (I know, I know, she’s not a lizard)...
Stephen Hawking said we may not want to advertise ourselves to the Galaxy at large or an interstellar Pizarro could come down and open up a planet sized can of whoop-ass.
My personal guess is that life will be found where there is continuously present liquid water over billion year time frames.
With liquid water, many other criteria for life come also.
Col. O’Neal and the gang showed a lot of habitable worlds spoke English and many looked like backdrops for Renaissance fairs.
I think a planet could be habitable to us once plants have begun taking over the dry land. Obviously water is a requirement for us and a major factor in evolutionary theory but we’re already highly evolved and could leapfrog over a lot of things and create many others.
This is assuming that we were technologically advanced enough to get there so we would probably be advanced enough to have at least some terraforming capabilities.
>> “I predict we’ll eventually learn that none of them have life, and we’ll likely never visit a single one.” <<
Safe guess.
.
What an incredibly stupid statement!
“I hope you don’t think we know everything there is to know in physics”
No, my prediction has nothing to do with knowing everything about physics, but everything to do with knowing the basic nature of our universe.
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