Fractal Softworks Forum
Other => Discussions => Topic started by: Thaago on February 22, 2017, 10:44:11 AM
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/science/trappist-1-exoplanets-nasa.html?
This star system is incredible! Its a dwarf star, much dimmer/cooler/OLDER than the sun, with 7 planets closer than mercury is in our system. They are resonantly locked, with 3 in the calculated habitable zone!
The sun on one of those planets would be 3-4 times bigger in the sky than us, but has so much light in the infrared that the color would be... weird. Salmon like? Light would be 1-2% what we get on earth during the day (brighter than a full moon).
I'm going to read the nature paper later, but the blurb makes it look really cool because the system is such that we can study the atmospheric composition of the planets.
Oh, and its only 40 LY away.
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That's super-exciting! Can't wait to see what they find when they study this system in more detail.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnKFaAS30X8 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnKFaAS30X8)
The planets also are very close to each other. If a person was standing on one of the planet’s surface, they could gaze up and potentially see geological features or clouds of neighboring worlds, which would sometimes appear larger than the moon in Earth's sky.
(https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/3_poster.png)
I'd like to board the colony vessel, please...
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Has anything been said about the radiation coming from the dwarf star? Lots of planets in the habitable zone is nice and all, but if they're irradiated to high hell, it might not be of much use.
7 planets though, that's impressive on it's own, first time we've found something like that.
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Did they mention if they could tell if the planets are tidally locked? Seems that most in the brown dwarf hab zone we find are.
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Lots of planets in the habitable zone is nice and all, but if they're irradiated to high hell, it might not be of much use.
Not to us, but we're not going to be there anytime soon.
There are however quite many organisms that have a lot more radiations tolerance than we do. The most likely forms of alien life we'll see,
microbes and bacteria, can in some cases withstand tremendous amounts of radiation, up to 3000 times what would definitely kill even the
most resilient human.
Even more complex lifeforms such as members of the wasp family show very high resistances.
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The thing is, high radiation might prevent the starting of life alltogether, so it's not good for us or for possible life. Once life is formed though, then it can form a resistance to radiation - but before then, the radiation is probably going to destroy the molecules that can help.
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A red dwarf would give off even less harmful radiation than our own star. Maybe that is a bad thing though, maybe life needs a kick start from radiation.
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The "kick" is thought to be lightning, tho. IIRC radiation does no good to life as we know it, except maybe random genetic mutation - even then, it's more likely to screw things up rater than giving something useful.