In a First, 'Super-Earth' Planet Shows It Could Have an Atmosphere (cnn.com) 22
"Scientists say they have detected promising signs that a planet orbiting a star 49 light-years from Earth could have an atmosphere," reports CNN, "making it potentially suitable for life."
Called LHS 1140b, the object is about five times the mass of our planet, or a "super-Earth." This planet orbits around its star in the "Goldilocks zone," also known as the habitable zone, meaning its surface temperature is not too hot or too cold for liquid water to exist... "It appears to be consistent with Earth, meaning it might have an iron core and a silicate mantle, plus some sort of low-density component, which is probably a combination of water and, now we know, an atmosphere," [said Collin Cherubim, a planetary scientist and lead author of a paper on the finding, published July 16 in the journal Science]... If further observations confirm the findings, LHS 1140b would mark the first discovery of an atmosphere on a rocky planet in the habitable zone of another star...
There is no evidence of life or a life-supporting atmosphere on LHS 1140b now, but Cherubim said he believes it's a formidable candidate for potential signatures of extraterrestrial life. "I think it's the best place to look for life outside the solar system at this point," he said. "It's mostly rocky, it's at the right temperature to support liquid water on the surface, and it has an atmosphere — those are the three key ingredients we look for..." Confirming the existence of an atmosphere on a rocky planet orbiting a red dwarf would be particularly exciting, Cherubim said, because the possibility of that happening is an open question in astronomy. "Can rocky planets have atmospheres around red dwarfs? This is the first bona fide yes," he said. "It's kind of a sigh of relief for a lot of us. But the jury's still out. Maybe this is a weird planet, and it's an oddball, or maybe it's the first of many. We don't know yet."
Now "The James Webb Space Telescope is going to look at it," Cherubim told CNN, and "Hubble's going to look at it. Basically, everybody who can see it is going to be training their eyes on it."
Michaël Gillon, research director of the Astrobiology Research Unit at Belgium's University of Liège warned CNN that no definitive proof exists that LHS 1140b possesses a substantial atmosphere. But if the detection of helium can be confirmed, the implications would be profound. "Until now, we had only limited evidence for atmospheres on temperate rocky exoplanets. Demonstrating that LHS 1140 b has retained a substantial atmosphere over billions of years would show that at least some habitable zone Super-Earths around red dwarfs can survive the intense early activity of their host stars."
There is no evidence of life or a life-supporting atmosphere on LHS 1140b now, but Cherubim said he believes it's a formidable candidate for potential signatures of extraterrestrial life. "I think it's the best place to look for life outside the solar system at this point," he said. "It's mostly rocky, it's at the right temperature to support liquid water on the surface, and it has an atmosphere — those are the three key ingredients we look for..." Confirming the existence of an atmosphere on a rocky planet orbiting a red dwarf would be particularly exciting, Cherubim said, because the possibility of that happening is an open question in astronomy. "Can rocky planets have atmospheres around red dwarfs? This is the first bona fide yes," he said. "It's kind of a sigh of relief for a lot of us. But the jury's still out. Maybe this is a weird planet, and it's an oddball, or maybe it's the first of many. We don't know yet."
Now "The James Webb Space Telescope is going to look at it," Cherubim told CNN, and "Hubble's going to look at it. Basically, everybody who can see it is going to be training their eyes on it."
Michaël Gillon, research director of the Astrobiology Research Unit at Belgium's University of Liège warned CNN that no definitive proof exists that LHS 1140b possesses a substantial atmosphere. But if the detection of helium can be confirmed, the implications would be profound. "Until now, we had only limited evidence for atmospheres on temperate rocky exoplanets. Demonstrating that LHS 1140 b has retained a substantial atmosphere over billions of years would show that at least some habitable zone Super-Earths around red dwarfs can survive the intense early activity of their host stars."
49 light years... so close! (Score:2, Informative)
It would only take 77,000 years to get there at the fastest speed accomplished by a human-made object. Hey Elon... Excelsior!
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Yeah, it's going to be hard to establish a plausible positive ROI for interstellar travel. I think even public funding for probes will be problematic, since it will take years just to get flyby photos. Probably the first flyby will be funded by some rich guy.
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'Years' is soft-peddling it. We lack the technology to reach the nearest star to the Sun in less than 80 years, and even that is so expensive and unlikely to succeed that we'd never fund it. A 49 light year trip would take 980 years to get there, and assuming nothing critical broke enroute, it's incredibly unlikely you'd successfully beam any useful data back.
We could eventually build a fusion drive and halve that time. There's still nothing at the end of the trip to justify the investment. Telescopes a
Re: 49 light years... so close! (Score:2)
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If you can build an enclosed habitat that can keep a population alive for 1000 years in deep space, you'd find it a lot easier to do the same on Earth. And if that's not an option, Mars, or the asteroid belt. Places where there are resources to exploit to resupply and repair, or even expand.
And that's before you think about how your destination is an entire alien biosphere - you might know the air, water temperature and gravity are all fine... but you won't have any idea if you can digest the locally a
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We already have a planet that can currently hold life. Imagine if we just worried about not completely shitting this one up.
Missing information: the atmosphere is Helium (Score:2)
The information buried way down in the article is that the atmospheric gas detected is helium.
Really not as exciting a discovery as the article makes it seem. Nobody doubts that planets can have helium in their atmosphere. In our solar system this is characteristic of the gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn) and the ice giants (Uranus, Neptune).
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I wonder if any lifeforms evolving in that 5G condition have figured out how to use the helium to lighten their load.
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I wonder if any lifeforms evolving in that 5G condition have figured out how to use the helium to lighten their load.
Or maybe they use it to raise the pitch of their voices. I imagine that sentient beings which evolved at 5G might have deep, rumbling voices...
What would be REALLY exciting - over and above finding intelligent extraterrestrial non-human life - is discovering that they could metabolize helium.
The uses of Helium (Score:2)
What would be REALLY exciting - over and above finding intelligent extraterrestrial non-human life - is discovering that they could metabolize helium.
Why not? The aliens in Project Hail Mary could build solid objects out of xenon, so why not helium?
Re:The uses of Helium (Score:4, Informative)
What would be REALLY exciting - over and above finding intelligent extraterrestrial non-human life - is discovering that they could metabolize helium.
Why not? The aliens in Project Hail Mary could build solid objects out of xenon, so why not helium?
I can say confidently that nothing has or is going to metabolize helium anytime soon. Helium is the noblest of all the noble gases. It can't form compounds with anything, except under extreme conditions such as 300,000 times Earth's atmospheric pressure.
Xenon, on the other hand is a noble gas that can form compounds, typically involving fluorine or oxygen. Some of them are used industrially.
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I wonder if any lifeforms evolving in that 5G condition have figured out how to use the helium to lighten their load.
Only if they're running down the road, with seven women on their mind.
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Well I doubt they would want to be owned or stoned, but a new friend might be nice.
5X gravity? (Score:2)
Umm good luck with that. The animals on that planet would need strong muscles. Birds maybe impossible to evolve unless the atmosphere is super thick. And their rocket scientists or aerospace engineers would have to be geniuses.
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A planet with 5x earth's gravity would have a hard time supporting large animals. The mass of an animal scales with the cube of its linear size, but its strength scales only as the square of it (roughly the cross-sectional area of its muscles.) Very tiny creatures like bacterial might be able to cope just fine.
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They wear capes with the letter S on
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LHS 1140b has 5x the mass, but only about 2.4x the surface gravity (since the surface is further away from the center of the planet's mass). Which is still enough to make life difficult for large animals, of course.
But even if the gravity was 5g, you could get a lot bigger than bacteria. Regular mice from Earth can survive in 7G environments for months at a time. Bacteria apparently can survive hundreds of thousands of Gs.
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Thanks for the improvement. I agree, you could probably have animals significantly larger than bacteria. I was going to suggest insect-sized, but decided to be overly conservative in my speculation.
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It's not just "survivable Gs" that matter. Unless you can sprout roots or some kind of mycelium (unlikely until you've gone through rounds of evolution), bacteria/life needs to move from place to place .. motility .. that's a bit tough in high gravity unless you're in a churning fluid or something.
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Umm good luck with that. The animals on that planet would need strong muscles.
Not if they live in the water. You clearly underestimate what billions of years of evolution can produce.
Ruuuuuuuun! (Score:2)
Cowboyneal is standing in front of the telescope again, you do NOT want to be in the room when you realize what that atmosphere is made of.