Posted on 11/14/2018 10:38:38 AM PST by BenLurkin
The red dwarf star itself emits only about 0.4% of our sun's radiance, so the planet receives about 2% of the intensity that Earth receives from its sun. This is because Barnard's star is in the class of M dwarf stars, cooler and less massive than our sun. It's also an old star that predates our own solar system.
The planet is about the same orbital distance from its star as Mercury is from our sun, making a full pass around the star every 233 days. This places it in the "snow line" of the star, where it's cold enough for water to freeze into solid ice. This region in a planetary system is where the building blocks of planets are thought to form, collecting material to become cores. As they migrate closer to their host stars, gathering more material, they become planets.
It's the first time a planet this small and distant from its star has been detected using the radial velocity technique, which Butler helped pioneer. This method is sensitive to the mass of the exoplanet and measures changes in the host star's velocity. Instruments can be used to detect tiny wobbles in the star's orbit that are caused by the planet's gravity.
In the 1930s, Dutch-American astronomer Peter van de Kamp began a quest to study Barnard's star that lasted for most of his 93 years. His claims of how planets could fit in orbit around the star were refuted...
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
A place to exile all the criminal Donk election officials from Broward and Palm Beach counties, Florida
LOL
The red dwarf star itself emits only about 0.4% of our sun’s radiance, so the planet receives about 2% of the intensity that Earth receives from its sun. This is because Barnard’s star is in the class of M dwarf stars, cooler and less massive than our sun. It’s also an old star that predates our own solar system.
...
And it will still be shining long after the Sun is burned out.
Red dwarfs stay in their main sequence for trillions of years.
Hell, 6 light years may as well be right down the street.
I am of the opinion that it would be easier to heat a cold planet via solar reflectors than to cool a hot planet. Either way, habitation if possible would require some terraforming.
Less than 2 parsecs!
New Horizons travels at around 36,373 mph. One light-year is 5.87849981 × 10 12 miles. (That’s 5,878,499,810,000 miles, or nearly 6 trillion miles). So, it would take New Horizons 18,449 years to travel one light year.
Times 6.
Is it a great place for Winter Sports ,you know with all our Global Warming
Are the Erf-like Planet’s Dinosaurs frozen too?
Should name the planet Ultima Thule and check out if Brian Blessed is hanging out there. [Space 1999 Reference]
Providing the level of toxins are not too high.
ahh, so if the envirowhackos are right and we end up destroying this one, we can just take another out to thaw...
*ping*
Lemme know when the scientists get a short signal indicating the numbers —> 3.1415 etc etc etc
That’ll be the DAY !!!
Exactly! In galactic terms, right down the street. If we left now, we could be there in 110,694 years or so.
It’s not an Earth, and it’s not a Super-Earth either. And forget about going there. In other words, why this article?
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