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posted by Fnord666 on Monday January 15 2018, @06:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the should-be-a-tv-series dept.

SPARCS, a NASA-funded CubeSat mission led by Arizona State University, will monitor nearby red dwarf stars for flare activity and sunspots in order to assess their habitability:

In 2021, a spacecraft the size of a Cheerios box will carry a small telescope into Earth orbit on an unusual mission. Its task is to monitor the flares and sunspots of small stars to assess how habitable the space environment is for planets orbiting them.

The spacecraft, known as the Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat, or SPARCS for short, is a new NASA-funded space telescope. The mission, including spacecraft design, integration and resulting science, is led by Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE).

"This is a mission to the borderland of astrophysics and astrobiology," said Evgenya Shkolnik, assistant professor in SESE and principal investigator for the SPARCS mission. "We're going to study the habitability and high-energy environment around stars that we call M dwarfs."

[...] Because M dwarfs are so plentiful, astronomers estimate that our galaxy alone contains roughly 40 billion — that's billion with a B — rocky planets in habitable zones around their stars. This means that most of the habitable-zone planets in our galaxy orbit M dwarfs. In fact, the nearest one, dubbed Proxima b, lies just 4.2 light-years away, which is on our doorstep in astronomical terms.


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by DannyB on Monday January 15 2018, @08:10PM (3 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 15 2018, @08:10PM (#622697) Journal

    If this type of star, with exoplanets are far more common, it is obvious to wonder if this might be the dominant type of life bearing planet and ours is a less common type.

    Suppose life already evolved to a high level on that type of planet before it did on earth.

    Maybe life on all those red dwarf star exoplanets has already reached some Great Filter we have yet to reach. (all ISPs merge into Comcast, trailer park reality tv is highest rated, junk food becomes the only food group.)

    Is an atmosphere necessary on a tidally locked planet to have life? Could there be an underground ocean (but what mechanism of formation)? Could such an environment exist near the "equator" of the planet between light / dark sides? Such a civilization would come to regard the warm and cold sides of the world as a fixed feature like our magnetic poles, moon, etc. Maybe those who pass go on to eternity in the warm side or the cold side depending on how they swam during their mortal life.

    If there were life, might it be unrecognizable to us? So our robotic probes begin harvesting resources, building new ships, and sending manufactured goods back to earth. Only too late do we realize there is life, and it is massively organized against us. Maybe they are unable to recognize our robotic probes as the product of an intelligent design. Or to recognize us as life forms. Or post unkind but highly modded comments about how earth is relatively late in the game of planetary evolution, etc. Devoid of life. A prime resource harvesting candidate.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday January 16 2018, @12:06AM (1 child)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday January 16 2018, @12:06AM (#622858) Journal

      "Life" may be a low bar if we are talking about subsurface oceans.

      http://www.newsweek.com/life-solar-system-likely-exists-and-more-common-we-think-780229 [newsweek.com]

      There could be life [wikipedia.org] on Mars (interior ocean, not surface), Ceres, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Enceladus, Dione, Rhea, Titan (interior water ocean instead of hydrocarbon lake), Titania, Oberon, Triton, Pluto, etc.

      I don't expect any complex space-faring civilization could form on ocean worlds or in cold subsurface oceans. If you can't even create fire or invent the wheel, you won't be building spaceships. That's not to say that there couldn't be intelligent dolphin-like life in some cases. Just that it would be very stuck, unable to develop further than language and maybe moving around some rock and ice chunks.

      The tidal locking scenario with a thin ring around a planet supporting moderate temperatures seems plausible. But we need JWST or something bigger to confirm it.

      Maybe they are unable to recognize our robotic probes as the product of an intelligent design. Or to recognize us as life forms. Or post unkind but highly modded comments about how earth is relatively late in the game of planetary evolution, etc. Devoid of life. A prime resource harvesting candidate.

      Possibly, but it seems more like science fiction wanking than a plausible outcome. If they are intelligent enough to have reached a point of having collective goals and science, they should eventually figure out that invaders are life forms. Or at least that robotic probes are unusual. They may worship the invaders or probes as gods (ancient aliens!).

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:20PM

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:20PM (#623130) Journal

        I don't expect any complex space-faring civilization could form on ocean worlds or in cold subsurface oceans.

        I wouldn't expect that either. But I still wouldn't discount it. Looking at the early stages of planet earth, completely inhospitable to life, it is difficult to imagine how life could even develop. How would the first living cell happen? Of course by "first", I don't mean a single cell, I mean nearly identical cells, all forming in the chemical soup at about the same time, within, say, a window of several tens of millennia? Once that chemical soup, after long periods of time, with constant energy pumped into it from some strange nearby nuclear fusion source, forms the complex enough molecules that by coincidence it is possible for the right ones to come together to form the machinery of a cell. Seems highly unlikely. Less like something that should go in a science textbook, and more like something for a science fiction textbook. :-)

        Or at least that robotic probes are unusual. They may worship the invaders or probes as gods (ancient aliens!).

        As the robotic probes leave, one droid drops his screwdriver. The native planet dwellers below rush to enshrine this sign from the gods that fell from the sky. A later robotic probe sees that in that spot, a gigantic monument has been erected. Perfectly in the shape of a screwdriver, with lettering meticulously reproduced down the length of the handle "PROPERTY OF SPACEX".

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @11:50AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @11:50AM (#623086)

      If this type of star, with exoplanets are far more common,

      Not sure what you are saying here. Are you saying that planets are more common around red dwarfs? Because that is almost decisively false. It is simply easier to detect planets around red dwarfs because they are closer to their stars.

  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @09:32PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @09:32PM (#622751)

    Facinating. We've finally got a unit of scientific volume that is more granular than the Olympic swimming pool. Now if only we knew *which* Cheerios box it was, we could get a unit of astronomical scientific discovery per Cheerio [google.com], and then we'd *really* be making skme headway!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:15AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:15AM (#622937)

      I'm guessing that the one with which most folks are familiar (most affordable??) is the 9oz thing. [google.com]
      Wow! $2.99 for 9oz of grain. That's $5.32/lb.

      Last time I bought grain, I got a 24oz loaf of bread for 99c. That's 67c/lb.
      I get five each 7oz packages of pasta for 99c. That's 45c/lb.
      I get a rice for 40c/lb.

      That grain they're selling must be awesome stuff.

      .
      ...and I remember when Google's shopping engine was called Froogle and was actually worth a damn.
      Back then, it respected the intitle parameter and Boolean NOTs and let you arrange things by price.
      That thing they've got now is a complete pile of shit.

      ...then there's vendors who try to pile as much promotion on to 1 page as possible and in the process make their things unsearchable junk.

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @11:09PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @11:09PM (#622833)

    Yeah, I know - that's not what the title says. But, that's what I read a minute ago. Can't sleep, tired, cranky, I looked at the title, and saw something about red dwarves' bad habits. Always smoking foul smelling pipes, or chewing something that resembles tobacco, and gossiping, drinking - well, read it for yourself.

    https://archiveofourown.org/works/1258990/chapters/2592061 [archiveofourown.org]

    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:25PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:25PM (#623134) Journal

      Unfortunately for him, by hobbit standards, dwarves have a lot of unsavory and downright annoying habits. Very bad habits

      Very bad habbits. Terible! Sad.

      Therefore the administration will stick to the practice of discriminating against Red Dwarves and stick to hiring tried and true Orange Ooompa Loompas instead. Thank you.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
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