from the tentatively-named-Doc-Grumpy-Happy-Sleepy-Bashful-Sneezy-and-Dopey dept.
Astronomers have observed enough planetary transits to confirm the existence of seven "Earth-sized" exoplanets orbiting TRAPPIST-1, an ultra-cool (~2550 K) red dwarf star about 39.5 light years away. Three of the exoplanets are located inside the "habitable zone" of their parent star. These three orbit from 0.028 to 0.045 AU away from the star:
Astronomers using the TRAPPIST–South telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory, the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Paranal and the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope, as well as other telescopes around the world, have now confirmed the existence of at least seven small planets orbiting the cool red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1. All the planets, labelled TRAPPIST-1b, c, d, e, f, g and h in order of increasing distance from their parent star, have sizes similar to Earth.
The exoplanets are presumed to be tidally locked. The six closest to TRAPPIST-1 have been determined to be rocky, while the seventh, TRAPPIST-1h, requires additional observations to determine its characteristics due to its longer orbital period.
Mass estimates for the planets range from 0.41 Earth masses (M⊕) to 1.38 M⊕. Radii range from 0.76 Earth radii (R⊕) to 1.13 R⊕.
Spitzer, Hubble, and other telescopes will continue to make observations of the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system, but the best data will likely come from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which is scheduled to launch in late 2018. JWST will allow the atmospheres and temperatures of many exoplanets to be characterized, which will help to settle whether the "habitable zones" of red dwarf stars are actually hospitable.
Artist illustrations and data for the TRAPPIST-1 system compared to Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Earth.
Here's a website dedicated to the star.
Seven temperate terrestrial planets around the nearby ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 (DOI: 10.1038/nature21360) (DX)
Related Stories
Astrophysicists have modeled the effects of red dwarf star flare activity on the atmospheres of orbiting exoplanets, and found that heavy gases including oxygen would be lost quickly, even in the so-called "habitable zone":
[When] the scientists accounted for superflares, their new model indicates the violent storms of young red dwarfs generate enough high-energy radiation to enable the escape of even oxygen and nitrogen – building blocks for life's essential molecules.
"The more X-ray and extreme ultraviolet energy there is, the more electrons are generated and the stronger the ion escape effect becomes," Glocer said. "This effect is very sensitive to the amount of energy the star emits, which means it must play a strong role in determining what is and is not a habitable planet."
Considering oxygen escape alone, the model estimates a young red dwarf could render a close-in exoplanet uninhabitable within a few tens to a hundred million years. The loss of both atmospheric hydrogen and oxygen would reduce and eliminate the planet's water supply before life would have a chance to develop.
"The results of this work could have profound implications for the atmospheric chemistry of these worlds," said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, a Goddard space scientist not involved with the study. "The team's conclusions will impact our ongoing studies of missions that would search for signs of life in the chemical composition of those atmospheres."
The research has obvious implications for exoplanets like Proxima Centauri b.
YouTube video (20 seconds).
How Hospitable Are Space Weather Affected Habitable Zones? The Role of Ion Escape (DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/836/1/L3) (DX)
The red dwarf strikes again with 42 observed solar flares. Back in February, NASA and ESO announced the discovery of three potentially habitable Earth-like exoplanets in the TRAPPIST-1 system. Astronomers analyzing data from the Kepler space telescope have observed energetic solar flares which they believe could make it less likely that the TRAPPIST-1 system could host life.
Frequent flaring in the TRAPPIST-1 system - unsuited for life? (arXiv:1703.10130)
Related: Probability of CME Impact on Exoplanets Orbiting M Dwarfs and Solar-like Stars (DOI: 10.3847/0004-637X/826/2/195) (DX)
Astronomers have confirmed the orbital period for the outermost known exoplanet orbiting TRAPPIST-1: TRAPPIST-1h:
Scientists using NASA's Kepler space telescope identified a regular pattern in the orbits of the planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system that confirmed suspected details about the orbit of its outermost and least understood planet, TRAPPIST-1h.
[...] Astronomers from the University of Washington have used data from the Kepler spacecraft to confirm that TRAPPIST-1h orbits its star every 19 days. At six million miles from its cool dwarf star, TRAPPIST-1h is located beyond the outer edge of the habitable zone, and is likely too cold for life as we know it. The amount of energy (per unit area) planet h receives from its star is comparable to what the dwarf planet Ceres, located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, gets from our sun.
[...] The team calculated six possible resonant periods for planet h that would not disrupt the stability of the system, but only one was not ruled out by additional data. The other five possibilities could have been observed in the Spitzer and ground-based data collected by the TRAPPIST team.
[...] TRAPPIST-1's seven-planet chain of resonances established a record among known planetary systems, the previous holders being the systems Kepler-80 and Kepler-223, each with four resonant planets.
Previously: Three New Earth-Like Planets Discovered Around an Ultra Cool Red Dwarf
Seven Earth-Sized Exoplanets, Including Three Potentially Habitable, Identified Around TRAPPIST-1
Powerful Solar Flares Found at TRAPPIST-1 Could Dim Chances for Life
TRAPPIST-1 was known to be at least 500 million years old. Now astronomers estimate it to be between 5.4 and 9.8 billion years old:
Scientists now have a good estimate for the age of one of the most intriguing planetary systems discovered to date– TRAPPIST-1, a system of seven Earth-size worlds orbiting an ultra-cool dwarf star about 40 light-years away. Researchers say in a new study that the TRAPPIST-1 star is quite old: between 5.4 and 9.8 billion years. This is up to twice as old as our own solar system, which formed some 4.5 billion years ago.
[...] At the time of its discovery, scientists believed the TRAPPIST-1 system had to be at least 500 million years old, since it takes stars of TRAPPIST-1's low mass (roughly 8 percent that of the Sun) roughly that long to contract to its minimum size, just a bit larger than the planet Jupiter. However, even this lower age limit was uncertain; in theory, the star could be almost as old as the universe itself. Are the orbits of this compact system of planets stable? Might life have enough time to evolve on any of these worlds?
Previously:
Seven Earth-Sized Exoplanets, Including Three Potentially Habitable, Identified Around TRAPPIST-1
TRAPPIST-1h Orbital Details Confirmed
Star's magnetic field could turn habitable-zone planets into magma soup
[A] team of European researchers has identified something else that could have an immense effect on habitability: the star's magnetic field. Under the right conditions, planets close to a star will experience a strong but variable magnetic field, which can cause induction heating. In the case of one system with several habitable zone planets, the induction heating could be strong enough to convert them into oceans of magma.
[...] The European team behind the new report focused on M dwarf stars. Because these are small, relatively cool objects, their habitable zones are close to the star and well within the region where the star's magnetic field is quite strong. They also have magnetic fields that are strong to begin with, sometimes in the area of thousands of Gauss. The magnetic field of our Sun is typically 10 to 1,000 times weaker.
Not all M dwarfs rotate quickly enough for this to matter. Proxima Centauri, which hosts the closest known exoplanet, takes more than 80 days to complete a rotation. But there is a nearby M dwarf that completes a rotation in only three days: TRAPPIST-1, which hosts at least seven planets, three of them in the habitable zone. So, the team decided to model how much of an effect induction heating might have on these bodies.
[...] For TRAPPIST-1c, the third planet out from the star, induction heating reaches more than 60 percent of the heat released in the planet by radioactive decay. That's enough to melt the entire surface, turning it into a magma ocean in nearly all the different model conditions sampled. The same conditions are likely on TRAPPIST-1d, the one in the habitable zone, where induction heating can be above half the amount of heat released by radioactive decay.
Red dwarf exolife killer or a way to expand the habitable zone further out?
Magma oceans and enhanced volcanism on TRAPPIST-1 planets due to induction heating (DOI: 10.1038/s41550-017-0284-0) (DX)
Previously: Seven Earth-Sized Exoplanets, Including Three Potentially Habitable, Identified Around TRAPPIST-1
Powerful Solar Flares Found at TRAPPIST-1 Could Dim Chances for Life
TRAPPIST-1h Orbital Details Confirmed
TRAPPIST-1 Older than Our Solar System
Hubble Observations Suggest TRAPPIST-1 Exoplanets Could Have Water
Scientists have used the Spitzer Space Telescope to find a possible exoplanet or brown dwarf candidate, OGLE-2016-BLG-1190Lb, around 22,000 light years away near the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Spitzer is currently using transit photometry and gravitational microlensing to find exoplanets, a use the telescope wasn't originally designed for. Spitzer recently discovered five of the seven exoplanets around TRAPPIST-1 using the transit photometry method.
OGLE-2016-BLG-1190Lb is likely to be the first exoplanet Spitzer has found in the Milky Way's Galactic bulge using gravitational microlensing. At an estimated 13.4 ± 0.9 Jupiter masses, the object is right near the deuterium burning limit, the boundary dividing large gas giants from brown dwarfs.
The paper explains the significance of the discovery:
The discovery of Spitzer microlensing planet OGLE-2016-BLG-1190Lb is remarkable in five different respects. First, it is the first planet in the Spitzer Galactic-distribution sample that likely lies in the Galactic bulge, which would break the trend from the three previous members of this sample. Second, it is precisely measured to be right at the edge of the brown dwarf desert. Since the existence of the brown dwarf desert is the signature of different formation mechanisms for stars and planets, the extremely close proximity of OGLE-2016-BLG-1190Lb to this desert raises the question of whether it is truly a "planet" (by formation mechanism) and therefore reacts back upon its role tracing the Galactic distribution of planets, just mentioned above. Third, it is the first planet to enter the Spitzer "blind" sample whose existence was recognized prior to its choice as a Spitzer target. This seeming contradiction was clearly anticipated by Yee et al. (2015b) when they established their protocols for the Galactic distribution experiment. The discovery therefore tests the well-defined, but intricate procedures devised by Yee et al. (2015b) to deal with this possibility. Fourth, it is the first planet (and indeed the first microlensing event) for which the well-known microlens-parallax degeneracy has been broken by observations from two satellites. Finally, it is the first microlensing planet for which a complete orbital solution has been attempted. While this attempt is not completely successful in that a one-dimensional degeneracy remains, it is an important benchmark on the road to such solutions.
OGLE-2016-BLG-1190Lb: First Spitzer Bulge Planet Lies Near the Planet/Brown-Dwarf Boundary
Related: Seven Earth-Sized Exoplanets, Including Three Potentially Habitable, Identified Around TRAPPIST-1
Scientists Improve Brown Dwarf Weather Forecasts
Google's research team Google AI has applied machine learning to data from NASA's Kepler space observatory, finding an 8th exoplanet orbiting Kepler-90 (2,545 ly away). The team also found a sixth exoplanet orbiting Kepler-80 (1,100 ly away):
Our solar system now is tied for most number of planets around a single star, with the recent discovery of an eighth planet circling Kepler-90, a Sun-like star 2,545 light years from Earth. The planet was discovered in data from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope.
The newly-discovered Kepler-90i – a sizzling hot, rocky planet that orbits its star once every 14.4 days – was found using machine learning from Google. Machine learning is an approach to artificial intelligence in which computers "learn." In this case, computers learned to identify planets by finding in Kepler data instances where the telescope recorded signals from planets beyond our solar system, known as exoplanets.
[...] Kepler-90i wasn't the only jewel this neural network sifted out. In the Kepler-80 system, they found a sixth planet. This one, the Earth-sized Kepler-80g, and four of its neighboring planets form what is called a resonant chain – where planets are locked by their mutual gravity in a rhythmic orbital dance. The result is an extremely stable system, similar to the seven planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system.
Their research paper reporting these findings has been accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal. [Christopher] Shallue and [Andrew] Vanderburg plan to apply their neural network to Kepler's full set of more than 150,000 stars.
The size of Kepler-90i is estimated at 1.32 ± 0.21 Earth radii. Surface temperature is estimated at 435°C (709 K).
Kepler-80g is likely smaller at 1.13 ± 0.14 Earth radii, with a cooler surface temperature of 144°C (418 K).
The outermost known exoplanet in the Kepler-90 system, Kepler-90h, has a mass under 1.2 Jupiter masses and a temperature of around 292 K (19 °C; 66 °F), so it may be a good candidate for hosting life on a moon.
NASA will host a Reddit AMA at 3 PM EST to discuss the findings.
Also at University of Texas at Austin.
Related: Seven Earth-Sized Exoplanets, Including Three Potentially Habitable, Identified Around TRAPPIST-1
Previously: Google and NASA to Reveal Mysterious New Space Find
The presence of large quantities of oxygen ions may be able to distinguish habitable exoplanets with life from barren exoplanets in the habitable zone (resembling Venus or Mars):
Like Earth, Venus and Mars are small rocky planets; they have permanent atmospheres like Earth, and their atmospheres are exposed to the same solar radiation as Earth's. Data from the Pioneer Venus Orbiter and the Viking descent probe on Mars show that they have very similar ionospheres to each other—which don't contain a lot of atomic O+ ions. Know what else Venus and Mars are missing? Photosynthesis.
[Astronomy PhD candidate Paul] Dalba's contention is that photosynthesis on a planet's surface, which generates a surfeit of molecular oxygen, is the only thing that can account for these atomic O+ ions in a planet's ionosphere. The mere existence of life throws a planet's atmosphere out of chemical balance. O+ would be a neat biomarker because there isn't a numerical cutoff required—just the dominance of O+ among the ionic species in the upper atmosphere would indicate "thriving global biological activity" on the planet below.
Dalba claims that Venus and Mars act as negative controls, demonstrating that planets like Earth but lacking life don't have this O+ layer. Some may think that continuous volcanic activity on the surface could also generate enough oxygen, but Dalba doesn't. Chemistry involving water and UV light [open, DOI: 10.1038/srep13977] [DX] can also release oxygen. But the amount of water on Earth is insufficient to account for the requisite oxygen content, so he thinks that the presence of water on other planets wouldn't make enough oxygen there either.
Atomic oxygen ions as ionospheric biomarkers on exoplanets (DOI: 10.1038/s41550-017-0375-y) (DX)
Related: Nitrogen in Ancient Rocks a Sign of Early Life
Oxygen Ions From Earth Escape to the Moon
Researchers Suffocate Hopes of Life Support in Red Dwarf "Habitable Zones"
Seven Earth-Sized Exoplanets, Including Three Potentially Habitable, Identified Around TRAPPIST-1
Cosmic Methyl Chloride Detection Complicates the Search for Life on Exoplanets
Mars Colonists Could Produce Oxygen by Making a Plasma Out of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
Analysis of Microfossils Finds that Microbial Life Existed at Least 3.5 Billion Years Ago
To Detect Life on Other Planets, Look for Methane, Carbon Dioxide, and an Absence of Carbon Monoxide
TRAPPIST-1's exoplanets appear to have migrated closer to TRAPPIST-1 over time until they reached their current orbits. This migration appears to have allowed them to retain too much water to support life:
What [the ASU-Vanderbilt team] found through their analyses was that the relatively "dry" inner planets ("b" and "c") were consistent with having less than 15 percent water by mass (for comparison, Earth is 0.02 percent water by mass). The outer planets ("f" and "g") were consistent with having more than 50 percent water by mass. This equates to the water of hundreds of Earth-oceans. The masses of the TRAPPIST-1 planets continue to be refined, so these proportions must be considered estimates for now, but the general trends seem clear.
"What we are seeing for the first time are Earth-sized planets that have a lot of water or ice on them," said Steven Desch, ASU astrophysicist and contributing author.
But the researchers also found that the ice-rich TRAPPIST-1 planets are much closer to their host star than the ice line. The "ice line" in any solar system, including TRAPPIST-1's, is the distance from the star beyond which water exists as ice and can be accreted into a planet; inside the ice line water exists as vapor and will not be accreted. Through their analyses, the team determined that the TRAPPIST-1 planets must have formed much farther from their star, beyond the ice line, and migrated in to their current orbits close to the host star.
[...] "We typically think having liquid water on a planet as a way to start life, since life, as we know it on Earth, is composed mostly of water and requires it to live," Hinkel explained. "However, a planet that is a water world, or one that doesn't have any surface above the water, does not have the important geochemical or elemental cycles that are absolutely necessary for life."
Also at Phys.org.
Inward migration of the TRAPPIST-1 planets as inferred from their water-rich compositions (DOI: 10.1038/s41550-018-0411-6) (DX) (arXiv)
Related: Powerful Solar Flares Found at TRAPPIST-1 Could Dim Chances for Life
TRAPPIST-1 Older than Our Solar System
Hubble Observations Suggest TRAPPIST-1 Exoplanets Could Have Water
Induction Heating Could Cause TRAPPIST-1 Exoplanets to Melt
Another TRAPPIST-1 Habitability Study
Alien Life Could Thrive On Four Earth-Like Planets Close To The Solar System, Says Study
Alien life could be evolving right now on some of the nearest exoplanets to our solar system, claim scientists at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Their proof is you.
It's been presumed that the high levels of radiation known to be bombarding many of the rocky Earth-like exoplanets discovered so far by astronomers precludes life, but that theory is turned on its head by new research published [open, DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stz724] [DX] in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
In "Lessons from Early Earth: UV Surface Radiation Should Not Limit the Habitability of Active M Star System", the authors say that all of life on Earth today evolved from creatures that thrived during an era of much higher levels of UV radiation assault. So why not life on alien worlds? It also poses another question: does the evolution of life actually require high levels of radiation?
The exoplanets studied are Proxima b, TRAPPIST-1e, Ross 128 b, and LHS 1140 b.
Related: ESO Confirms Reports of Proxima Centauri Exoplanet
Proxima b May Have Oceans
Seven Earth-Sized Exoplanets, Including Three Potentially Habitable, Identified Around TRAPPIST-1
Possible Habitable Planet, LHS 1140b, Only 40 Light Years Away
An Earth-Like Atmosphere May Not Survive the Radiation in Proxima b's Orbit
Hubble Observations Suggest TRAPPIST-1 Exoplanets Could Have Water
Ross 128b: A Newly Discovered "Earth-Like" Exoplanet Orbiting a Less Active Red Dwarf
Another TRAPPIST-1 Habitability Study
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @02:27PM
Let's point some transmitters in that direction.
Oh wait, that would be politically correct since as we know the earth is flat and roughly 6,000 years old, and the Bible doesn't say anything about these "Trappers." We need to stop this progressive madness. I'm sick of politically correct shit like "exo-planets." Yep. Yee haw.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @02:40PM
Hahah, you're funny.
What I'm tired of is all of this talk of "earth like" or "potentially habitable" planets that we can't really verify, and don't have any way to get to (not in our life times). AND, all of the ridiculous news articles about this with "artists renditions" of these beautiful landscapes from these supposed planets. Oooh! Look at the pictures from that planet they found, it looks just like earth. I can't wait until we get there!
This isn't science. It's a blatant attempt to get attention so they'll get more money to do star gazing. We have real problems right here we need to take care of first.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @02:47PM
Its also not done by the actual scientists but those who translate the admittedly dry news of we discovered a planet that happens to be within the habitable zone to those of us who aren't astrophysicists. Its when it has to be dumbed down to fit within a newspaper for general consumption that extra crud is added, again not by scientists but copy editors. Nice try guys.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday February 23 2017, @02:55PM
Wow, aren't you guys a bunch of killjoys?
This IS exciting news. These exoplanets are almost ideal for further study: Their relative closeness ot Earth ("only" 39 LY), the smallness of the star, the short orbital periods (lots of transits), the fact that there are no less than THREE planets in the goldilcks zone, the number of planets and their gravitational interactions all help make the Trappist system a great candidate for further study. If we find life outside of this solar system, chances are good we'll find it here first.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday February 23 2017, @05:42PM
Where's the "Grumpy" mod?
It would only take a few hundred to a few thousand years to get a probe there, plus another 40 to get the data back. We should start planning now, because there ain't much else within reach after we're done trashing our only Goldilocks planet!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 23 2017, @11:05PM
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday February 23 2017, @11:15PM
It's gonna take a lot of trashing the Earth to make Venus look hospitable by comparison...
Old one: European beer is the best thing to carry on long trips, because you drink it once and turn it into American beer.
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Friday February 24 2017, @02:58AM
I heard Trappist beer is very good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trappist_beer [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @06:31PM
Study? Right!
Can't really study it, can we? Can't get to it. Really, just a guess. Might be habitable, might not. Might have a tropical rain forest, might not.
I'm all for science, but come on, this is getting ridiculous. Lets fix our home first. Focus some scientific resources right here, right now. Figure out how to feed the starving masses, produce energy that's clean and inexpensive, better medical care, etc.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Thursday February 23 2017, @07:39PM
Yes, we can. There's a lot of information you can get just from analyzing the light spectrum when the planet passes in front of the star. For example, you can figure out the composition of the atmosphere. And if the atmosphere contains a larger percentage of oxygen, it has an extremely high probability of having life.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @08:10PM
If we can never get there, how are you going to verify.
Too many hypotheticals for me.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday February 23 2017, @10:17PM
Then you probably also doubt that there is helium in the sun, because nobody ever took a gas probe from the sun and checked that it really contained helium atoms, right?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday February 24 2017, @01:22AM
The James Webb Space Telescope can study it in 2019.
NASA research has led to medical advances. NASA has an annual publication showing off benefits of their research called Spinoff [nasa.gov].
A small amount of resources is spent on space travel. Hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty and into the middle class in recent decades. Starvation is not a problem of lacking food right now, it's a problem of distributing food, usually in places undergoing a war. If you want to fix starvation, have fun fixing places like Syria or South Sudan. NASA researches energy technologies and sees obvious benefits from improved solar and practical nuclear fusion. Medical care/research has loads of money thrown into it already, but we'll see a huge decline in costs once preventative regenerative medicine takes off.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 24 2017, @04:58AM
It surreal to see a crowd saying 'India should stick to cleaning latrines before trying space tech' turn into 'USA should stick to solving real world problems before trying space tech' in less than a decade.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday February 24 2017, @05:46AM
And which crowd is that? The ACs flinging their own poo at NASA have a fairly ephemeral sense of community by nature and don't represent the majority opinion here.
On the (3 comment) Indian space mission article, nobody said that India should not operate a space program. ISRO has done its work on the cheap, and its Mars mission was successful on the first attempt.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday February 24 2017, @12:05AM
Come to that, slim chances, I'd say.
With a temperature of 2550K at the surface, the emission spectrum of TRAPPIST-1 will be too weak in UV - one would need other forms of energy to (e.g.) break down the nitrogen molecule to make proteins.
The small mass of the star cause the planets to be close one to the other, slim chances for moons (thus significant tides).
BTW, I read that all 7 are very likely tidaly locked [wikipedia.org] - another major obstacle for life to appear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday February 24 2017, @02:29AM
On the other hand, given their proximity and their insanely fast orbits, living on one of these has to be quite a show.
If it's even remotely habitable, we can send life there. Bacteria and simple plants are a lot more resilient and less needy than us.
Finding life when we get there would be a mess. We really don't have a great track record of handling existing lifeforms when we get somewhere new.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @03:25PM
GP here. I was being too cynical. I'm enjoying a nice cup of tea, earl grey, hot right now. I agree that the "artist renditions" are completely useless. I was looking at one and thought, "You've painted an Arctic iceberg with three moon-like objects in the sky instead of one. Yay."
There are two primary things that have me quite excited at this. Maybe, if I may be optimistic this time instead of cynical.
First, three of those planets are in the habitable zone. Those are workable odds for life that may even have a chance of evolving to some complexity (and might we hope intelligence) on at least one of those planets. iirc the local system here also has three planets in the habitable zone.
Second, it's only 40 ly away. That's very accessible compared to many other places. Sure there's the Star Trek fantasy of sending people out there and various other scenarios involving hibernation or what-have-you. In reality, even a robotic probe would probably be out of the question since there's no way we know of right now to even get something to 0.1c. Clearly we can't do much with it as far as actually going there is concerned, but on the off chance that on one of those planets there is intelligent life....
My main doubt about humans ever being able to make meaningful contact with another intelligent species are the time-distances involved. I have no confidence that humanity would be capable of sending a signal to a good-looking planet say 400 ly away and still having a civilization in power capable of receiving a reply at least 800 years in the future. (That also assumes that at exactly 400 years from now, there's a civilization in power on one of those planets that's also capable of receiving and interpreting this signal and replying.) Add in some fudge factors and a project like that would need to last centuries.
Being 40 ly away, assuming there is an intelligent technological civilization over there, means that it may be possible to actually contact them, receive a reply, and maybe have a couple more good rounds within the average life expectancy of a human civilization (which I guesstimate at about 300-400 years before collapse depending on how you measure things).
tl;dr I see good reasons to be excited here even if we can't physically go there. Maybe there's no intelligent life there. Who knows. But, and I'll be dead before physics would permit me to ever know, if....
(P.S. Didn't explain in my post above but I would like to propose that if there is intelligent life out there, we call them Trappers. It's simple and catchy.)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday February 23 2017, @04:25PM
> (That also assumes that at exactly 400 years from now, there's a civilization in power on one of those planets that's also capable of receiving and interpreting this signal and replying.
One of the quirks of the vastness of cosmological time, is that if we find intelligent life out there capable of receiving our signals, it will almost certainly be REALLY intelligent life. It's simple statistics:
Current estimates date the first ever homo sapiens to about 200000 years ago, give or take a Tuesday afternoon or two. We only developed the technology to detect and decode radio signals in the last hundred years, hundred and fifty if you're feeling generous. In other words, for over 99.9% of our time on Earth, this planet has been uninhabitted as far as the rest of the galaxy is concerned.
Of course, that's just the past. Human history extends into the future as well (we hope). Possibly far into the future. Let's assume that if we don't somehow extinct ourselves / knock ourselves back into the iron age in the next couple hundred years, we will master all kinds of exciting new technologies (clean energy, closed loop recycling, advanced robotics, AI, space travel / colonisation, brain uploads, GNU-Hurd, whatever) that enable the sustainable, long-term survival of our civilisation into the indefinite future. In that case, you end up with a civilisational timeline that looks a bit like this, but even more exaggerated:
{---------------------200000 years Banging rocks together--------------------}{*}{-------------------------------------Many many of centuries of post-scarcity utopian sc-fi future-------------------------------}
Where the {*} represents the measly couple of hundred of years we currently inhabit, the period in which humanity raises itself up from a squabbling pre-industrial agrarian society to a persistent global / interplanetary civilisation. Pick a point at random on that line and 99.999% of the time and you are going to either encounter pre-industrial societies (no response from SETI signals, but keep an eye on them) or superadvanced Vorlons / Culture ("Oh hai, welcome to the galactic community"). The chances of finding a bunch of early-industrial Victorians or facebook-obsessed millenials at a comparable level of development to 2016 humanity is vanishingly small.
Flipping this around then, and coming back parent's post: Assuming that civilisations on other planets develop like ours[1], we can be reasonably confident that any response to our SETI signals will almost certainly be from a civilisation that can wait 400 years for a reply.
[1] Yeah it's a big assumption, but like all this SETI and exoplanet stuff, we can only work with what we know, and all we know about Life right now is based on a datapoint of exactly One life-sustaining planet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @05:43PM
we will master all kinds of exciting new technologies
We won't be more intelligent for having done so. More knowledgeable, yes.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday February 23 2017, @05:52PM
> for over 99.9% of our time on Earth, this planet has been uninhabitted as far as the rest of the galaxy is concerned.
Technocentric mindset, man. The Aliens, man, they can feel our auras, man. We radiate crummy Karma like crazy, man. That's why they're hiding from us, and you need another puff to commune with them, man.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday February 23 2017, @09:57PM
The TRAPPIST-1 system might be a poor choice to look for intelligent life because the star is "at least 500 million years old". That line from Wikipedia seems to be based on this paper [arxiv.org]. I guess that is based on the low temperature of the "ultra-cool" red dwarfs requiring at the least 500 million years of cooling, so there is no upper bound on the age given. 500 million years is about as long as it supposedly took for life to form/seed on Earth (I believe the date has been pushed a bit earlier by recent research).
The good news is that the James Webb Space Telescope should be able to give us more clarity about this system in just 2 years or so. It will launch in late 2018, and observations of this system will be a part of the "first wave" or whatever they're calling it. Throw in a few months to analyze the results and publish, and I'd expect to see JWST atmospheric data in mid-late 2019. Before that, there will be additional observations using Spitzer and increased interest in the system at observatories around the world.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @05:59PM
Verify schmerify, potentially habitable will do. If we stay where we are we're doomed. The mutant star goat is coming!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday February 23 2017, @06:34PM
It's called the James Webb Space Telescope.
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(Score: 4, Informative) by aim on Thursday February 23 2017, @03:00PM
In case you're interested in the hardware used: http://www.trappist.ulg.ac.be/cms/c_3313473/en/trappist-eq-trappist-south [ulg.ac.be]
It's a nice 60cm RC (Ritchey-Chretien, same type as Hubble) telescope with a focal length of 4.8m (at f/8), on a heavy german equatorial mount.
The 'scope alone seems to be close to 70kEUR, around 26kEUR for the mount. I found a reference at close to 40kUSD for the camera. It sure is nice equipment, but not for the normal amateur astronomer...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Unixnut on Thursday February 23 2017, @03:21PM
Very interesting link, thanks for sharing.
And the unsung OS providing a glimpse into another solar system? Microsoft Windows XP Pro!
Not sure how to take that, if you have to use windows, then XP/2000 is pretty much the peak of Microsoft's work. Would have nice if it was an open source OS, but whatever works (and runs their software).
However MS doesn't really support it anymore. I just hope it is airgapped if nothing else. Otherwise it is discovering amazing worlds by day, and DDOSing you at night while sending you v1agra emails.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @05:26PM
Not sure how to take that, if you have to use windows, then XP/2000 is pretty much the peak of Microsoft's work. Would have nice if it was an open source OS, but whatever works (and runs their software).
A few weeks ago I participated in a small (20~30 people from ~10 countries) symposium about near-Earth space science at my university.
Looking around the room, I noticed a distinct lack of those shiny Apple logos that I usually see everywhere else. There was only one Apple laptop in the room, and it belonged to a Master's student. Everyone else, every single researcher, professor or PhD student seemed to be running Windows -- me included.
To give you an idea how weird that was to see around here, in my lab there are 10 people, undergrad, Master's, and PhD students, plus professor, and everyone but me has an Apple laptop. From what I've seen around, that sample is representative. At least we all use Linux on our desktop machines :)
(Score: 5, Informative) by richtopia on Thursday February 23 2017, @03:06PM
Most important impact of the discovery: A new travel poster from JPL (and a new desktop background for my laptop)!
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/visions-of-the-future/ [nasa.gov]
(Score: 3, Funny) by inertnet on Thursday February 23 2017, @04:06PM
I don't know if many Americans will get the references here. Belgians are involved in this project. Trappist is a kind of beer in Belgium, hop is an ingredient.
Actually trappist refers to the monks that brew the beer, so it's not really a kind of beer. Belgium still has many kinds of beer, whereas in most countries just a few big brands are left.
My first thought when I read the news yesterday was that they're really looking for liquid beer instead of water on those planets. It would make them more habitable for Belgian people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @05:34PM
I'm a bit few countries south from Belgium, and I've never heard of Trappist beer. My first (and only) association was... Trappist cheese. [wikipedia.org]
Those Trappist monks seem to be quite awesome.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @06:35PM
Trappist Ale. Vow of silence. And everyone knows there is no such country as Belgium. Belgium does not exist! [zapatopi.net]
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Thursday February 23 2017, @08:26PM
If you can get your hands on it, try Westmalle Tripel. One of the best trappist beers in the world in my opinion. But be moderate, it has 9 to 10% alcohol. And don't pour the beer dregs (if any) into your glass, so you have to pour it gently.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday February 23 2017, @09:22PM
for those without Javascript:
Some 40 light-years from Earth, a planet called TRAPPIST-1e offers a heart-stopping view: brilliant objects in a red sky, looming like larger and smaller versions of our own moon. But these are no moons. They are Earth-sized planets in a spectacular planetary system outside our own. These seven rocky worlds huddle around their small, dim, red star, like a family around a campfire. Any of them could harbor liquid water, but the planet shown here, fourth from the TRAPPIST-1 star, is in the habitable zone, the area around the star where liquid water is most likely to be detected. This system was revealed by the TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) and NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. The planets are also excellent targets for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Take a planet-hopping excursion through the TRAPPIST-1 system.
› Download printable version (48MB PDF File) [nasa.gov]
› Download high resolution version (287MB TIFF File) [nasa.gov]
Download all posters at the highest printing resolution and please make sure to review the JPL Image Use Policy.
› Download all here. (675MB) [nasa.gov]
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday February 24 2017, @03:58AM
corrected links:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/visions-of-the-future/pdf/trappist.pdf [nasa.gov]
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/visions-of-the-future/tif/trappist.tif [nasa.gov]
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/visions-of-the-future/tif/all.zip [nasa.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @06:56PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumstellar_habitable_zone [wikipedia.org]
This is concerning. Are they using that 0-dimensional stefan-boltzmann model like all the climate researchers teach?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @07:17PM
It looks like up to at least 2013 they were...
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1303.7079 [arxiv.org]
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Thursday February 23 2017, @07:41PM
They have to use some constraints, and given the wide range of possible planetary and stellar conditions it is probably better to use a basic limiting condition. The inner and outer zones are calculated on extreme conditions, thus they are more inclusive than exclusive.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @07:41PM
This news comes less than a week after this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nasa-climate-change_us_58a91361e4b045cd34c2689e [huffingtonpost.com]
I wonder if they are related, is this a test of how much hype astronomy can withstand?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday February 23 2017, @09:45PM
As you can plainly see in the summary, Europe was very involved in this research. The observations were made before Trump came into office, and Spitzer was launched in 2003 during the Bush presidency. Also, this research is not considered "climate change research" or "Earth science research". There is no relation between this and that. And Trump has not made a move to stifle NASA's climate change/Earth science research just yet.
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(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday February 23 2017, @08:54PM
from the tentatively-named-Doc-Grumpy-Happy-Sleepy-Bashful-Sneezy-and-Dopey dept.
If they actually named the planets that it would be hilarious! If only they had orbited a white star we could have named that Snow White. Disney could buy the naming rights ... poor aliens.
Anyhow when looking at the comparative image with stats (artist illustrations and data ...) compared to earth all but two of them seem to have really low mass, but then so does Mars. They are all really close to their star. What I'm mostly intrested in tho is the orbit period - what are the implications of it only being about a week to two weeks for the habitable once (e,f and g) compared to ours, if any? Will seasons pass so fast you won't even know or be able to tell the difference if there even are any. What kind of effect will this have on the planets.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday February 23 2017, @09:39PM
The implications of the low orbital period, or more precisely, being close to a red dwarf star which could flare up and cause ion escape, are not too good:
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=17/02/10/0547243 [soylentnews.org]
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/836/1/L3 [iop.org]
The good news is that the James Webb Space Telescope should shed some light on habitability because it will be able to give us a lot of information about the atmospheres. As opposed to Hubble which has only ruled out that 2 of the exoplanets in this system have atmospheres that are not dominated by hydrogen and helium.
Note: TRAPPIST-1's age is supposed to be "at least 500 million years". That means that if ion escape is happening over hundreds of millions of years like that paper suggests, the process might not be finished yet.
You mention seasons but that has to do with the rotation/tilt of the planet. These exoplanets are presumed to be tidally locked. The consensus seems to be that tidal locking is not a big issue for habitability. The atmosphere can circulate heat around the entirety of the planet, and there may be a temperate zone where day meets night (although even full daylight on some of these planets is estimated to look like dusk/dawn on Earth). Maybe tidal locking will actually improve habitability for those planets closest to the star (my speculation).
One thing I was interested in but didn't note in the summary: these planets seem to be less dense than Earth. TRAPPIST-1e and f have radii comparable to Earth but with significantly lower mass. This could be an indication that they are very water rich... perhaps "water worlds" with no land?
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