This newly discovered Earth-sized planet could harbor life
Personally, I think the lack of activity and its impact on habitability is overblown. Ross 128 is a pretty old star (~10bn years I think; still v young for an M dwarf ) so will be less active and I'm not sure you can safely conclude that it wasn't active when very young - which is when most of the atmosphere and volatile loss occurs.On the strange signals, they are almost certainly terrestrial ... Edit: covered here https://www.skymania.com/wp/2017/11/earth-sized-temperate-planet-found-direction-mystery-radio-signals.html/18504/--- Tony
Just out of interest, do we have sensors with sufficient resolution to pick up bio-indicators in Ross-128b's atmosphere like free oxygen or even ozone (spectrographically, at least) or would the primary totally drown out even reflection data?
Quote from: jebbo on 11/16/2017 07:13 amPersonally, I think the lack of activity and its impact on habitability is overblown. Ross 128 is a pretty old star (~10bn years I think; still v young for an M dwarf ) so will be less active and I'm not sure you can safely conclude that it wasn't active when very young - which is when most of the atmosphere and volatile loss occurs.On the strange signals, they are almost certainly terrestrial ... Edit: covered here https://www.skymania.com/wp/2017/11/earth-sized-temperate-planet-found-direction-mystery-radio-signals.html/18504/--- TonyThat’s true but if the planet moved into towards the star at a later date it may have avoided the worst of the star’s activity.