The Best Bet for Alien Life May Be in Planetary Systems Very Different From Ours

Excerpt from wired.com



In the hunt for extraterrestrial life,

scientists started by searching for a world orbiting a star just like

the sun. After all, the steady warmth of that glowing yellow ball in the

sky makes life on Earth possible.

But as astronomers continue to discover thousands of planets,

they’re realizing that if (or when) we find signs of extraterrestrial

life, chances are good that those aliens will orbit a star quite

different from the sun—one that’s redder, cooler, and at a fraction of

the sun’s size and mass. So in the quest for otherworldly life, many

astronomers have set their sights on these small stars, known as red

dwarfs or M dwarfs.

At first, planet-hunting astronomers didn’t care so much about M

dwarfs. After the first planet outside the solar system was discovered

in 1995, scientists began hunting for a true Earth twin: a rocky planet

like Earth with an orbit like ours around a sun-like star. Indeed, the

search for that kind of system drove astronomers through most of the

2000s, says astronomer Phil Muirhead of Boston University.

But then astronomers realized that it might be technically easier to

find planets around M dwarfs. Detecting another planet is really hard,

and scientists rely on two main methods. In the first, they look for a

drop in a star’s brightness when a planet passes in front of it. In the

second, astronomers measure the slight wobble of a star, caused by the

gentle gravitational tug of an orbiting planet. With both of these

techniques, the signal is stronger and easier to detect for a planet

orbiting an M dwarf. A planet around an M dwarf also orbits more

frequently, increasing the chances that astronomers will spot it.

M dwarfs got a big boost from the Kepler space telescope, which

launched in 2008. By staring at small patch of the sky, the telescope

searches for suddenly dimming stars when a planet passes in front of

them. In doing so, the spacecraft discovered a glut of planets—more than

1,000 at the latest count—it found a lot of planets around M dwarfs.

“Kepler changed everything,” Muirhead said. Because M-dwarf systems are

easier to find, the bounty of such planets is at least partly due to a

selection effect. But, as Muirhead points out, Kepler is also designed

to find Earth-sized planets around sun-like stars, and the numbers so

far suggest that M-dwarfs may offer the best odds for finding life.

“By sheer luck you would be more likely to find a potentially

habitable planet around an M dwarf than a star like the sun,” said

astronomer Courtney Dressing of Harvard. She led an analysis to estimate

how many Earth-sized planets—which she defined as those with radii

ranging from one to one-and-a-half times Earth’s radius—orbit M dwarfs

in the habitable zone, the region around the star where liquid water can

exist on the planet’s surface. According to her latest calculations, one in four M dwarfs hosts such a planet.

That’s higher than the estimated number of Earth-sized planets around a sun-like star, she says. For example, an analysis

by astronomer Erik Petigura of UC Berkeley suggests that fewer than 10

percent of sun-like stars have a planet with a radius between one and

two times that of Earth’s.

This illustration shows Kepler-186f, the first rocky planet found in a star’s habitable zone. Its star is an M dwarf. NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech

M dwarfs have another thing going for them. They’re the most common

star in the galaxy, comprising an estimated 75 percent of the Milky

Way’s hundreds of billions of stars. If Dressing’s estimates are right,

then our galaxy could be teeming with 100 billion Earth-sized planets in

their stars’ habitable zones.

To be sure, these estimates have lots of limitations. They depend on

what you mean by the habitable zone, which isn’t well defined.

Generally, the habitable zone is where it’s not too hot or too cold for

liquid water to exist. But there are countless considerations, such as

how well a planet’s atmosphere can retain water. With a more generous

definition that widens the habitable zone, Petigura’s numbers for

Earth-sized planets around a sun-like star go up to 22 percent or more.

Likewise, Dressing’s numbers could also go up.

Astronomers were initially skeptical of M-dwarf systems because they

thought a planet couldn’t be habitable near this kind of star. For one, M

dwarfs are more active, especially during within the first billion

years of its life. They may bombard a planet with life-killing

ultraviolet radiation. They can spew powerful stellar flares that would

strip a planet of its atmosphere.

And because a planet will tend to orbit close to an M dwarf, the

star’s gravity can alter the planet’s rotation around its axis. When

such a planet is tidally locked, as such a scenario is called, part of

the planet may see eternal daylight while another part sees eternal

night. The bright side would be fried while the dark side would

freeze—hardly a hospitable situation for life.

But none of these are settled issues, and some studies suggest they

may not be as big of a problem as previously thought, says astronomer

Aomawa Shields of UCLA. For example, habitability may depend on specific

types and frequency of flares, which aren’t well understood yet.

Computer models have also shown that an atmosphere can help distribute

heat, preventing the dark side of a planet from freezing over.

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The Best Bet for Alien Life May Be in Planetary Systems Very Different From Ours