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Nearby "Earth Like" Planet Discovered


Waspie_Dwarf

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Closest Temperate World Orbiting Quiet Star Discovered

ESO’s HARPS instrument finds Earth-mass exoplanet around Ross 128

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A temperate Earth-sized planet has been discovered only 11 light-years from the Solar System by a team using ESO’s unique planet-hunting HARPS instrument. The new world has the designation Ross 128 b and is now the second-closest temperate planet to be detected after Proxima b. It is also the closest planet to be discovered orbiting an inactive red dwarf star, which may increase the likelihood that this planet could potentially sustain life. Ross 128 b will be a prime target for ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope, which will be able to search for biomarkers in the planet's atmosphere.

A team working with ESO’s High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) at the La Silla Observatory in Chile has found that the red dwarf star Ross 128 is orbited by a low-mass exoplanet every 9.9 days. This Earth-sized world is expected to be temperate, with a surface temperature that may also be close to that of the Earth. Ross 128 is the “quietest” nearby star to host such a temperate exoplanet.

arrow3.gif  Read More: ESO

 

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One potential problem with habitable-zone worlds around red dwarf stars is tidal locking. The same side of the planet could always face the star, causing excessive heat on the star-ward side, and intense cold on the other. Atmospheric and oceanic circulation may lessen the problem, if the atmosphere is thick enough, and oceans exist on the planet. 

In the case of Ross 128 b, there may be another consideration. The orbital eccentricity is reported to be quite high-- 0.36. This may enable the planet to assume an orbital resonance, where it will rotate more rapidly than it orbits the star.

In our system, Mercury, with a lesser eccentricity of 0.21, spins three times for each two orbits of the Sun.  If Ross 128 b did that, its day would be only about 6.6 days long, with about 3.3 days of exposure to the star at a time, with 3.3 days to cool off, in between. 

A faster spin might also strengthen the  planetary magnetic field enough to prevent stellar radiation eroding the the atmosphere severely. This is  another area of concern in potentially habitable planets in orbit of red dwarfs.  

 

  

Edited by bison
improved paragraph structure
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It sounds worth giving it a good hard look at.  

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Even if we can't reach it, we might hear from it, if the planet hosts a civilization. The Arecibo Observatory reported artificial-seeming signals from this star, in May of this year. These were quite weak, and likely couldn't be detected by other, smaller radio telescopes. Arecibo listened again, briefly, for this signal, but couldn't confirm it. This  might be a case of 'perseverance furthers'. With detection of this promising planet, perhaps it will receive further SETI attention.  

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Well if the 600 year warning is correct, and who really knows, We should find a way to get the info on the viability of the planet.  Even if it is viable we need to determine what type of life, if any, exists there.  We don't need another round of taking over another culture's land as has been the case too many times in human history.

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Welv give there has been a radio signal producing species on Earth for about 100 out of the past 4,600,000,000 years, and since we have no evidence that this planet even has an atmosphere, let alone liquid water and basic life, nor a large Moon to stabilise its orbit,  I wouldnt be holding out hope on finding intelligent neighbours.
 

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It seems likely that a habitable zone planet of a red dwarf star would have a stable spin inclination with respect to its orbital plane. The very near proximity of star to planet should accomplish that. Recall that the star's gravity would be as strong as to affect the planet's rotation, either tidally locking it, or in the case of an eccentric orbit, causing it to assume resonance in a low integer ratio, like Mercury.

It's true that we don't know that the planet has an atmosphere, water, or life. These are, though, reasonable possibilities.  Given the substantial age of the Ross 128 star system, over twice that of the Sun, it doesn't seem especially improbable that life could have evolved there. It may even have had time to reach a higher state of development than our own.     

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4 hours ago, bison said:

Even if we can't reach it, we might hear from it, if the planet hosts a civilization. The Arecibo Observatory reported artificial-seeming signals from this star, in May of this year. These were quite weak, and likely couldn't be detected by other, smaller radio telescopes. Arecibo listened again, briefly, for this signal, but couldn't confirm it. This  might be a case of 'perseverance furthers'. With detection of this promising planet, perhaps it will receive further SETI attention.  

I didnt know that but searched for more informations and found this:

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Other unexplained signals, like the Wow! Signal, are commonly cited outside of academia to be proof of extraterrestrial communications. Unexplained here does not mean inexplicable; it just means we are not able to tell which is the precise source from many possibilities.

 

This was precisely the case of our signal from Ross 128, which we now call the Weird! Signal. We discussed our results with many other radio astronomers, but came up with no definitive answers. This finally motivated us to request the help from SETI Berkeley and the SETI Institute teams; both of which have a lot of observational experience and know very well the various kinds of terrestrial radio emissions.

(..)

After a careful analysis of the observations we performed last Sunday from the Arecibo Observatory, together with SETI Berkeley using the Green Bank Telescope and the SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array, we are now confident about the source of the Weird! Signal. The best explanation is that the signals are transmissions from one or more geostationary satellites. This explains why the signals were within the satellite’s frequencies and only appeared and persisted for Ross 128; this star is close to the celestial equator where many geostationary satellites are located. This fact, though, does not yet explain the strong dispersion-like features of the signals (diagonal lines in the figure); however, It is possible that multiple reflections caused these distortions, but we will need more time to explore this and other possibilities.

 

 

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Of course it's possible that the May 2017 Ross 128 signal was manmade interference. That is always a possibility with an unidentified SETI signal. The explanation for the features described as 'dispersion-like' seemed vague and unsatisfactory at that time. I've not heard that a better- thought-out version of this explanation has emerged since then. Lacking this, there is still the possibility that a genuine  SETI signal was involved.  The discovery of a potentially habitable planet in orbit of this star makes this possibility seem more probable.  

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46 minutes ago, bison said:

The discovery of a potentially habitable planet in orbit of this star makes this possibility seem more probable.  

Nonsense,

A signal from an extraterrestrial source is NOT a more probable cause. It is a possible, but unlikely cause. Applying Occam's razor the most plausible cause remains man made interference.

Your entire argument is of the form: hypothesis A (man made interference) does not fully explain the observations therefore hypothesis B (signal of extraterrestrial origin) MUST be the most likely. You have presented zero evidence to support the fact that this is a signal of extraterrestrial origin... none, zilch, nada, This is a massive logical fallacy, known as the  bifurcation fallacy. It totally disregards the possibility that there could be another explanation.

Other than the fact that the signal APPEARS to have originated in the same direction there is currently NO evidence to support the idea that this signal originated on Ross 148b.

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Just because it's earth sized doesn't mean it's likely to have life on it, why do they always think that just because something resembles earth in any way shape or form it means that it has potential for life... i mean if we go by earth standards then it's way too far away from the habitable zone anyway

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3 minutes ago, _KB_ said:

... i mean if we go by earth standards then it's way too far away from the habitable zone anyway

Ross 128b is orbiting its star at a distance of approximately 0,05AU so to claim its too far away by Earth standards, whatever that should mean here, is nonsense.

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Any rocky planet in a star's goldilocks zone is called "earthlike".

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18 hours ago, bison said:

Even if we can't reach it, we might hear from it, if the planet hosts a civilization. The Arecibo Observatory reported artificial-seeming signals from this star, in May of this year. These were quite weak, and likely couldn't be detected by other, smaller radio telescopes. Arecibo listened again, briefly, for this signal, but couldn't confirm it. This  might be a case of 'perseverance furthers'. With detection of this promising planet, perhaps it will receive further SETI attention.  

If the civilization is hundreds of thousands of years old....

Maybe, translated, the signals say...Help...our Sun is dying...

Finding life elsewhere in the Universe isn't like finding a needle in a haystack...it's more like finding a single grain of salt in the Sahara Desert.

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3 hours ago, Hammerclaw said:

Any rocky planet in a star's goldilocks zone is called "earthlike".

And anything outside of that is the Goldie Hawn Zone ...

~

 

[00.00:38]

~

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On 11/17/2017 at 11:17 AM, toast said:

Ross 128b is orbiting its star at a distance of approximately 0,05AU so to claim its too far away by Earth standards, whatever that should mean here, is nonsense.

sorry got confused in my language an exoplanet is a planet thats flying outside the orbit of a star freely in space or something like that, just googled it, apparently in English it means something entirely different

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5 minutes ago, _KB_ said:

sorry got confused in my language an exoplanet is a planet thats flying outside the orbit of a star freely in space or something like that, just googled it, apparently in English it means something entirely different

Exoplanets always orbit a star but not our sun and the free flying planets are called PMOs/planemos.

 

 

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