(no subject)

[james_davis_nicoll]

New Earth-like exoplanets discovered around red dwarf Teegarden star

Comments

[dewline]

The skies were always more crowded than we knew...and now we're learning more about just how crowded they are.

[(Anonymous)]

http://phl.upr.edu/press-releases/teegarden

"strong flares that might erode the atmospheres of the planets"

"might"?

Is there a "James Nicoll's Star"? Or... not any more?

Some people think Sol used to have more planets, and fewer belts of kryptonite rubble between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

That's Sol, the sun, not some guy whose name is Sol.

Robert Carnegie

[neowolf2]

The other problem with M stars is they can take up to a billion years to settle down to the main sequence. So any planet that forms is going to be cooked for a very long time, if it later ends up in the "habitable zone".

[(Anonymous)]

"Earth-like" is being used in ways that even Niven's robot probes would raise an eyebrow at.

[graydon]

Is it hydrogen or helium? No? It's a metal!

Astronomers have their own language. "Earthlike" is something like "rocky, vague vicinity of the habitable zone, might have an atmosphere, three zone structure".

I find myself wondering if anyone's figured out what kind of instrumentation is required to check an exoplanet for oxygen in its atmosphere.

[jreynolds197]

Also, if the star (and its planets) are as old as main-sequence M-class stars can be, in addition to being tide-locked to their star, whatever plate tectonics those planets may have had will long since have stopped.

AIUI, This would be an additional barrier to ongoing life as we know it.