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Space Stations, Space Shuttles and Beyond - The Aerospace Discussion Thread
LeeC:
NASA Telescope Reveals Largest Batch of Earth-Size, Habitable-Zone Planets Around Single Star
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-telescope-reveals-largest-batch-of-earth-size-habitable-zone-planets-around
BenRG:
There are a string of 'but...' qualifiers to this story. The most important of which is that TRAPPIST-1 only just barely qualifies as a star so the 'habitable' planets are in orbits far tighter than Mercury's around the sun: Years measured in a few dozen solar days and which lend themselves to tidally-locked diurnal periods with baked dry deserts on one hemisphere, deep-frozen ice fields on the other and a strip of potentially-habitable surface running around the terminator (the point where the sun is just touching the horizon).
Add on top of that, the planets are going to be so close to the primary that anything alive not under several meters of rock or several dozen meters of water are going to be cooked by the star's UV- and X-frequency radiation. It isn't as bad as Proxima Centauri (Alpha Centauri C), of course. That hellstar has high enough an X-ray flux and powerful enough flare events that it literally would have boiled away the atmosphere of its one confirmed planet!
Overall, any system whose primary is of spectral class M can be crossed off the 'ET lives here' list; the combination of low output and small size make for planets that really orbit a bit too close for comfort. They could be made at least habitable if you wanted to invest in domed or underground cities but I doubt that they'd have complex native life-forms and even simple would would need to be either subterranean or deep-swimming.
No, overall, please offer me a planet in the habitable zone of a star of spectral classes K, G or the smaller variants of class A. That requires an orbit wide enough in thermal terms that the inverse square effect turns the high-frequency radiation into something less than instant death for complex biology.
Grognard:
after reading all the blather posted by "highly esteemed scientists",
the sci-fi geek in me says: "yay. future targets for strip mining water and other valuables."
pwhodges:
--- Quote from: Grognard on 22 Feb 2017, 19:53 ---the sci-fi geek in me says: "yay. future targets for strip mining water and other valuables."
--- End quote ---
Well, first you have to deal with all those light-years...
Kugai:
And the Natives
If there are any and just how advanced they might be.
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