Author Topic: Strange Signals from the Nearby Red Dwarf Star Ross 128  (Read 17142 times)

Offline CuddlyRocket

This newly discovered Earth-sized planet could harbor life

You can find the paper at A temperate exo-Earth around a quiet M dwarf at 3.4 parsecs

Offline jebbo

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 940
  • Cambridge, UK
  • Liked: 608
  • Likes Given: 309
Re: Strange Signals from the Nearby Red Dwarf Star Ross 128
« Reply #41 on: 11/16/2017 07:13 am »
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
« Last Edit: 11/16/2017 09:02 am by jebbo »

Offline Star One

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 13997
  • UK
  • Liked: 3974
  • Likes Given: 220
Re: Strange Signals from the Nearby Red Dwarf Star Ross 128
« Reply #42 on: 11/16/2017 03:26 pm »
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

That’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.

Offline Ben the Space Brit

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 7206
  • A spaceflight fan
  • London, UK
  • Liked: 806
  • Likes Given: 900
Re: Strange Signals from the Nearby Red Dwarf Star Ross 128
« Reply #43 on: 11/16/2017 04:39 pm »
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?
"Oops! I left the silly thing in reverse!" - Duck Dodgers

~*~*~*~

The Space Shuttle Program - 1981-2011

The time for words has passed; The time has come to put up or shut up!
DON'T PROPAGANDISE, FLY!!!

Offline jebbo

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 940
  • Cambridge, UK
  • Liked: 608
  • Likes Given: 309
Re: Strange Signals from the Nearby Red Dwarf Star Ross 128
« Reply #44 on: 11/16/2017 04:45 pm »
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?

Not yet. With a bit of work we can just about manage it for Proxima, but not for Ross 128.  See the "Astronomy" thread, where I posted a few more details

--- Tony

Offline Dao Angkan

  • Full Member
  • **
  • Posts: 233
  • Liked: 77
  • Likes Given: 44
Re: Strange Signals from the Nearby Red Dwarf Star Ross 128
« Reply #45 on: 11/16/2017 06:44 pm »
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

I don't disagree with your general point that it may be less active due to age, but metallicity seems to be too high to have an age of ~10Gyr. I think latest estimates are ~5Gyr, but there's probably a decent margin of error.
« Last Edit: 11/16/2017 06:48 pm by Dao Angkan »

Offline jebbo

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 940
  • Cambridge, UK
  • Liked: 608
  • Likes Given: 309
Re: Strange Signals from the Nearby Red Dwarf Star Ross 128
« Reply #46 on: 11/16/2017 07:00 pm »
Agreed. Originally I took the age from Wikipedia, but the metallicity made me wonder. Wikipedia turns out to be wrong: the 9.45bn is actually the log10 of the age, so probably about 2.8bn years old. The paper is https://arxiv.org/abs/1501.01635

Edit: seeing a couple of [Fe/H] values (-0.02, -0.08) from ~2015.

--- Tony
« Last Edit: 11/16/2017 07:29 pm by jebbo »

Offline Dao Angkan

  • Full Member
  • **
  • Posts: 233
  • Liked: 77
  • Likes Given: 44
Re: Strange Signals from the Nearby Red Dwarf Star Ross 128
« Reply #47 on: 11/16/2017 07:24 pm »
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

That’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.

I think that planetary migration is generally theorised to occur very early in a solar systems life, whilst it still has a protoplanetary
disk to exchange momentum with. Once the "planetary neighbourhood" is cleared, then it would require a quite unlikely turn of events to "swing" a planet from an outer orbit, to an inner orbit. Not impossible, but not very likely.

Tags:
 

Advertisement NovaTech
Advertisement Northrop Grumman
Advertisement
Advertisement Margaritaville Beach Resort South Padre Island
Advertisement Brady Kenniston
Advertisement NextSpaceflight
Advertisement Nathan Barker Photography
1