There is a new article over at The Daily Galaxy which discusses the possibility of habitable planets around red dwarf stars – which are abundant in our galaxy and others.
The researchers modeled how reflective ice and snow would be on simulated planets orbiting two real-life red dwarfs. Ice and snow are less reflective against longer, redder wavelengths, while red dwarfs obviously have fairly red light to begin with.
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This means the outer edge of the habitable zone around red dwarfs might be 10 to 30 percent farther away from its parent zone than once suggested.
“I was surprised that the effect was as large as it was,” Joshi told Astrobiology Magazine. “The zone where liquid water is stable on a planet’s surface is farther away from such stars than previously thought.”
The science is fascinating. As a science fiction fan I am most interested in what will happen when (okay fine, ‘if’) we have a discovery of a habitable planet. Will it be suppressed? We have to expect that the world’s religions will have a very hard time accepting such an event, if the ongoing hostility towards the theory of evolution is an example. I suspect that whatever astronomers make the announcement will be quickly vilified by extremists of all stripes using the classic ‘if you can’t argue with evidence attack the messenger’ approach.
There is a well-worn SF trope of first contact, but I think something as simple as ‘first evidence’ would be an amazing event. Given the state of our world today, I suspect such a discovery would also be catalytic in almost all areas of our societies, and would probably trigger a period of ‘interesting times.’ What would evidence of another habitable world do to mortgage rates or the stock exchange? What about the next major election in almost every democracy? What effect would it have on existing autocratic systems?
If 100% of main sequence boecmes white dwarf(visible) then there is no intelligent life in the galaxy. No, if If 100% of main sequence boecmes white dwarf(visible) then there is no intelligent life that builds Dyson spheres in the galaxy. Not the same thing.I hate to be a buzzkill, but the notion that intelligent, tool-using life will invariably construct Dyson spheres is nonsense. There might be many reasons that sapient life does not do so, such as:- Sapient life arises on its planet too late in the star’s lifetime to reach the point where it has the technology to do so.- Sapient life arises, then goes extinct (through natural or self-inflicted means) before it has the opportunity to build such a structure.- There are engineering or physical constraints on the creation of such a structure which we are not yet aware of, since we lack the ability to create such large macroengineering structures. The notion that we would be able to understand the engineering requirements of a Dyson sphere are about as likely as the notion that a Roman Centurion would be able to understand the engineering requirements of a space elevator. The fact that we can imagine it doesn’t necessarily mean that we understand how likely it is that such a thing can be built.- A sapient, tool-using, macroscale-engineering civilization chooses, for whatever reason, not to do so. This might be because it limits its own energy consumption, or because it turns instead to other macroengineering projects, or even because it reaches some point at which it is not dependent on its star at all.