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https://www.keele.ac.uk/pressreleases/2017/atmospheredetectedaroundanearth-likeplanet.html
Astronomers have detected an atmosphere around the super-Earth planet GJ 1132b. This marks the first detection of an atmosphere around an Earth-like planet other than Earth itself, and thus is a significant step on the path towards the detection of life outside our Solar System. The team that made the discovery, led by Keele University's Dr John Southworth, used the 2.2 m ESO/MPG telescope in Chile to take images of the planet's host star GJ 1132. They were able to measure the slight decrease in brightness as the planet and its atmosphere absorbed some of the starlight while transiting (passing in front of) the host star.
[...] The discovery of this atmosphere is encouraging. Very low-mass stars are extremely common (much more so that[sic] Sun-like stars), and are known to host lots of small planets. But they also show a lot of magnetic activity, causing high levels of X-rays and ultraviolet light to be produced which might completely evaporate the planets' atmospheres. However, the properties of GJ 1132b show that an atmosphere can endure this for billion of years without being destroyed. Given the huge number of very low-mass stars and planets, this could mean that the conditions suitable for life are common in the Universe.
How much would this affect computing the Drake equation?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 09 2017, @06:59AM (2 children)
Scientists find Earth-like planet with an atmosphere just 39 light-years away [extremetech.com]
...and on another level of "better", it'd be nice if Keele University got a web guy who knew WTF he was doing.
31. Fatal Error: Cannot recover after last error. Any further errors will be ignored. [w3.org]
Folks, if you're going to put crap in your HTML, validate that crap.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by r1348 on Sunday April 09 2017, @11:06AM (1 child)
I think the importance of this discovery is not that this particular planet could host life (most likely it doesn't), but that solar systems around low-mass stars can have planets with atmospheres. This dramatically broaden the range of planets that we predict are suitable for life.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by dry on Monday April 10 2017, @02:28AM
The problem with low mass stars, besides being tidally locked, is that the low mass stars are not usually stable in their radiation output. You get flaring as well as general variability in output.
The Earth is lucky to orbit around a fairly stable star that hangs around stable parts of the galaxy and we lucked out that life seems to have adjusted the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere such that the temperature has been mostly stable even as the Sun has increased in brightness by 25 odd percent. That is going to what is rare, a planet that stays inhabitable for billions of years.