Nearby planet is 'excellent' target in search for life

BBC News ^ | November 15, 2017 | By Paul Rincon

[Oldeconomybuyer]

[P.O.E.]

First we send all the telephone sanitizers and account executives.

[ßuddaßudd]

remind me,, why do we want to find life elsewhere ??

[kjam22]

And why do we believe anything is near by?

[Pilgrim's Progress]

In before the ‘Red Dwarf’ BBC-series references.

[wally_bert]

Just no Rimmerworld please.

[Calvin Locke]

I thought that there was an unstable star in that region, making "life" impossible from deadly radiation?

Certainly no place to raise your kids, let alone visit in person.

Dang machines are having all the fun.

[Pilgrim's Progress]

I think the unstable star of Red Dwarf was Cat.

[backwoods-engineer]

So incredibly stupid to state this is a place to “search for life” (as if we have the means to travel 4.3 light years). It’s a FLARE STAR! I will sterilize whatever little planet is in a tight orbit around it, and sterilize it regularly.

[SandRat]

and the Carrel ODonnelians,

[BlueLancer]

remind me,, why do we want to find life elsewhere ??

Because the Deep Swamp wants to increase the tax base?

[ETL]

“At just 11 light-years away, it’s the second closest exoplanet of its kind to Earth.”

11 light years = 11 x 5.9 trillion miles = 64.9 trillion miles

[backwoods-engineer]

Stupid phone, too. Was supposed to say, “It will sterilize”...

[bert]

Because there are educated people who are curious and want to know

[Calvin Locke]

I don't think I ever caught "Red Dwarf".

OTOH, I suggest that launching Bomb 20 from Benson, AZ, might be able to take care of the problem.

[null and void]

Red Dwarf Ping!

[Simon Green]

remind me,, why do we want to find life elsewhere ??

Intellectual curiosity? Suppose there is life elsewhere in our Solar System, say, at Enceladus or Europa. Don't you think it would be worthwhile to discover and examine it?

[Wuli]

The many abuses of the use of “earth like” in promoting these stories when admittedly:

“But we still need to know what the atmosphere of Ross 128 b is like. Depending on its composition and the reflectivity of its clouds, the exoplanet may be life friendly with liquid water as the Earth, or sterile like Venus.”

“Earth like” is not merely the kind of star a planet is orbiting, the planets size and distance from its sun, suggestions (by light signature) there “may be” water there, and some other variables.

It requires a whole constellation of variables to ALL be present, and in every “earth like” exoplanet claimed so far, too few of those variables are there, or are known to be there.

I call this theme “popular science fraud”.

[wyowolf]

Send Vger to investigate...

[Simon Green]

And why do we believe anything is near by?

It's quite easy (as such thing go) to determine the distance to a star that's within a few hundred light years of Earth.