New instrument checks on Proxima Centauri’s planets
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-many-planets-orbit-our-nearest-neighboring-star/
New instrument checks on Proxima Centauri’s planets
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-many-planets-orbit-our-nearest-neighboring-star/
3 Comments
The article also states it can’t determine if life exists on these exoplanets so even if we determine we found a second earth we will have no idea what’s living if anything on that planet with our current technology. The future looks bright though with many more specialized telescopes being planned.
Problem here is M dwarf stars are likely to have eroded away any primary or secondary atmospheres on rocky worlds within the habitable zone.
Yes, RV & transit observations of rocky planets around M dwarves are definitely a worthwhile undertaking for increased understanding of planet formation, but searching for signs of life around such stars might be like looking for a temperate rainforest in a desert.
Wouldn’t it make substantially more sense for a mission or instrument to be dedicated to looking for signs of life that are much more unambiguous than just an atmosphere or a simple gas like oxygen (such as the presence of artificial lighting on the surface or signs of terraforming or engineering on a planetary scale aka techno-signs)?