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I’m getting annoyed at the disingenuous researchers and reporters who keep repeating it. A cursory look into any red dwarf based system will immediately show ho
by ramraj07 3y ago
I’m getting annoyed at the disingenuous researchers and reporters who keep repeating it. A cursory look into any red dwarf based system will immediately show how unlikely it is you will find complex life in them for two reasons:
1. The planets will be tidally locked so any habitable region would at best be in a small ring like region around the planet.
2. These stars are prone to massive storms which will likely eradicate if not the full atmosphere at least any life form that would need time to multiply before it gets mutated by radiation.
We should spend time looking for the nearest sun like stars and finding technology that can study their planets instead of saying “yeah this is the closest star so obviously we should expect life there” when all evidence indicates otherwise.
- namaria 3y agoYour analysis rests on a big silent assumption: that life elsewhere in the universe would be like life on Earth. A different strain of thought holds that life is actually the norm, and the way it developed on Earth was just how it thrived with our conditions. Thus looking for life in the nearest star system would be most logical. We don't know enough to rule out either and I welcome dissidence and widespread investigation, even through avenues some think would be illogical.
- ramraj07 3y agoContinuing the idea that life might be in a completely unrecognizable form, how are we even supposed to study and discover it?
- namaria 3y agoLike everything else ever studied. We use theory to make predictions and try to find measurements inconsistent with the theory to find out what we need to change about it. Ontology is entirely immaterial to this effort.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tokai 3y agoMoons around gas giants solves both problems. Being tidal locked to its planet and not the star, and could be protected by the gas giants magnetic field.
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoThen we ought to start by looking at the moons like that in our own solar system. I really really want to see what's under the ice (if anything) on Europa.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoThe article brings up those two exact points
- XorNot 3y agoWe can do more then one thing at a time. Alpha Centauri is the closest, easiest star to study by far. The technology to find Earth-like planets is pretty much an entirely separate field of astronomy to the technology required to characterize those planets (i.e. JWST doing atmospheric-transient spectroscopy). Whatever technique you apply to some "better" candidate would be the same as a technique which works well on Alpha Centauri, so that's the place you use it (absent something more convenient - like a space probe hanging out looking back at Earth with the same methods).