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An artist's impression shows a planetary system around a red dwarf star.
An analysis of data from NASA's Kepler planet-hunting mission suggests that about 6 percent of all red dwarf stars should have habitable, Earth-sized planets — and because red dwarfs are the most common stars in our galaxy, the nearest Earthlike planet could be as close as 13 light-years.
"We thought we would have to search vast distances to find an Earthlike planet. Now we realize another Earth is probably in our own backyard, waiting to be spotted," Harvard astronomer Courtney Dressing, the lead author of the data-crunching study, said in a news release.
That doesn't mean we can just hop out the back door and head for a red dwarf: Although 13 light-years is relatively close in astronomical terms, it would still take more than 50,000 years to cover that distance using current propulsion technology. But the finding could lead astronomers to cast a wider net in the search for the conditions conducive to extraterrestrial life.
Dressing presented her team's findings on Tuesday during a news briefing at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, or CfA. The research paper is expected to be published in The Astrophysical Journal.
Red dwarfs are thought to account for about 75 percent of the stars in the Milky Way: They're smaller, cooler and fainter than our sun — so faint, in fact, that no red dwarf is visible to the naked eye. But the fact that they're cooler means that closer-in planets are more likely to be habitable.
That's good news for planet-hunters: The Kepler space telescope, which was launched in 2009, detects alien worlds by looking for the subtle dimming of starlight as a planet passes in front of its alien sun. Closer-in planets would cover more of the star's disk, making them easier to detect.
Dressing and her colleagues sifted through the 158,000 stars targeted by the Kepler probe to identify all the red dwarfs. She said the stars' sizes and temperatures were calculated using computer models "that are more appropriate for these small red stars." Previously, those stellar characteristics were derived using a less precise, one-size-fits-all type of computer model, she said.
The fresh analysis showed that almost all of the stars were smaller and cooler than previously thought. That means the worlds detected around those planets would be proportionately smaller as well, bringing more of them into the Earth-sized category.
The astronomers identified 95 Kepler candidate planets that are circling red dwarfs. When they ran those candidates through their fine-tuned computer model, they found that three of them were roughly Earth-sized, with the right temperature to sustain liquid water and life. And when they factored in their estimates for the proportion of planets that would have gone undetected, due to the limitations of the Kepler mission's observing method, they concluded that 6 percent of all red dwarfs should have an Earth-sized, habitable planet.
"That rate implies that it will be significantly easier to search for life beyond the solar system than we previously thought," the CfA's David Charbonneau, a co-author of the study, said in Wednesday's news release.
Because our sun is surrounded by a swarm of red dwarfs, the statistics suggest that the most probable distance for such a habitable planet would be 13 light-years, if all the surrounding stars could be examined with a suitable telescope. Kepler isn't designed for such a survey — but a new type of space telescope, or a big enough network of ground-based telescopes, could take on the job. For example, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, currently due for launch in 2018, could study the thermal characteristics and perhaps even the atmospheres of nearby red-dwarf planets, Charbonneau said.
The researchers said that a habitable planet circling a red dwarf would be markedly different from Earth: It would probably be locked into an orbit that kept one side of the planet perpetually facing its alien sun. Charbonneau said the heat could conceivably be transported around the globe via a thick atmosphere or ocean.
Also, red dwarfs are known to be quite variable in their emissions, with occasional strong flares of ultraviolet light. "If that were to happen on Earth, it would cause havoc," Charbonneau told journalists.
But Dressing said alien life could conceivably adapt to such stresses. "You don't need an Earth clone to have life," she said.
Red-dwarf planets might have at least one edge over Earth in the habitability department: Astrobiologists have estimated that our planet could be rendered inhospitable to life in the next couple of billion years, due to a long-term increase in solar radiation. Red dwarfs are different in that regard. "They are incredibly long-lived," Charbonneau told journalists. "They never show their age."
He said it's conceivable that some of the planets circling red dwarfs could remain habitable for 10 billion years or more.
Caltech astronomer John Johnson said the newly reported research marks one more step toward taking the search for alien Earths out of the realm of science fiction and putting it squarely in the realm of science fact. "Now I think the conversation is starting in earnest," he said.
More about the planet search:
- Estimate suggests our galaxy has 17 billion hot Earths
- How to take a trip to Alpha Centauri ... and why
- Kepler space telescope recovers from glitch
- Cosmic Log archive on planets
The three habitable-zone planetary candidates identified in this study are Kepler Object of Interest (KOI) 1422.02, which is 90 percent the size of Earth in a 20-day orbit; KOI 2626.01, 1.4 times the size of Earth in a 38-day orbit; and KOI 854.01, 1.7 times the size of Earth in a 56-day orbit. All three are located about 300 to 600 light-years away and orbit stars with temperatures between 5,700 and 5,900 degrees Fahrenheit (3,150 to 3,260 degrees Celsius). For comparison, our sun’s surface is 10,000 degrees F, or 5,500 degrees C.
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
First published 11 a.m. ET Feb. 6. Last updated 12:53 p.m. ET Feb. 6.
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50,000 years... you'd probably run out of toothpaste way before then
I just looked out the back door. No red dwarfs in my backyard.
"What choo talkin' about Willis?" (An homage to the late Gary Coleman)
Yes, but will Kryten still be activated once we get there?
I'm going to eat you little fishy!
If we can't survive on those planets when we get there but there is life forms of a different or similar type what's the chance we could breed with them in order to create a creature like our selves that might survive? Are we able to manipulate our DNA to match a chimpanzee yet? It seems to me we are advancing a lot farther than we will admit to. Even today we have created animals such as Mules, Gorses and countless others. Here's another idea, we all know how we are able to make thing happen millions of miles away on a scheduled time frame. Curiosity is an example of that. How about if we take a female egg and male sperm and create a time capsule, send it into space so that in 50k years or when the capsule is opened life is created and incubated for who ever to see. How long will an egg and sperm last in a state of being frozen?
No, no, no, silly... you find Kryten on the Nova 5, crashed on an asteroid in deep space somewhere, and then he goes to the Red Dwarf aboard the Green Midget.
(mob_barley = serious red dwarf fan/geek)
I thought it was the blue midget? But I missed some episodes.
Mob, do you do much with NewsVine, or just through the NBC website?
Interesting that I just started watching Red Dwarf again. :)
It would be worth it to go there and find the next Superman ! But seriously.......the universe is teeming with life. This is no surprise.
The real surprise is that they continue to postulate and speculate. Still no hard evidence of anything. Should, could, probably. Yeah, that and a fifty cents will get you a cup of coffee. Maybe.
When they have hard evidence of a habitable planet with solid evidence that there is life give me a call. Till then it's all pretend.
Yeah, but 20 years ago people like you said the same thing about extra solar planets - that they were only a myth. The laws of nature are the same all over the universe. Chemistry and life are so intricately tied together that to believe only the Earth harbors life is ridiculous. Habitable zone planets would absolutely have undergone the chemistry of life if they have been around long enough and have water. It is just a matter of time until we find one, but we will need bigger scopes for that task.
To you it is pretend, but to people who perform science it is theory based on fact. The probability that the theory will hold true gets better with every discovery.
In order to actually find something, you have to start by postulating what it will be like, so you can at least make an educated guess about what to look for.
pullmyfinger13 The real surprise is that they continue to postulate and speculate. Still no hard evidence of anything. Should, could, probably. Yeah, that and a fifty cents will get you a cup of coffee. Maybe.
When they have hard evidence of a habitable planet with solid evidence that there is life give me a call. Till then it's all pretend.
Holy crap you just explained religion.
When we find them will they believe they were created in the image of their gods, will their gods be the same as ours. How could this be since the Earth is only seven thousand years old. Sarcasm before anyone starts.
"Yeah, but 20 years ago people like you said the same thing about extra solar planets - that they were only a myth"
I don't recall anyone ever phrasing ti that way. Indeed, there were plenty of reasons to think other planetary systems existed, that they almost had to exist, but we didn't have a solid example to point to. In 1995, we finally got one (at 51 Pegasi). Now we have plenty
Hopefully, in the not too distant future, we'll be able to say the same about extraterrestrial life.
If it's one thing we've learned about life on Earth, it can pretty much adapt to any conditions, as long as it gets a chance to start.
We still have only a single data point: Earth has life. Other planets? We don't know.
Well, Dream, describe life. Does it need to be like ours, carbon and oxygen based, with water needed? Could it not be life that came to being in Methane or Ethane? How about silicone or silica.
Life abounds on our planet in the damndest places and under the worst of circumstances, at least as we understand it. Couldn't life also abound in the damndest places under the worst of circumstances on some other planet.
And why does it have to be in a zone the same as Earth is? Couldn't it be further out, closer in to the star it orbits? Or could it not be a moon?
In fact, why could life not exist on our moon. Water's been found there, as it has on Mars as witnessed by the waterice at the poles of that planet.
There are just too many questions to be answered, too many theories to be postulated including faster than light travel, highly probable in my estimation, too much of everything, to be answered before concluding anything.
The only thing I can say for sure is that life exists on this planet in millions of forms, living in so many different types of environs. Until a person is willing to theorize that nothing has to be as we know it that person needs to just have religion and forget about anything else.
How about plasma and magnetic fields? Interstellar dust and currents...Who knows...
jackieboy, there's ample evidence that liquid water once flowed on the surface of Mars, and that it may have had more benign (yes, by our standards) in the past. It's just possible that there may be something deep under the surface, as is true here., where liquid water could still exist.
However, Lunar water has always been frozen. and conditions there haven't changed much in billions of years.
No, a world doesn't have to be just like Earth to support life. Indeed, the most we can say for sure about Earth, is that it was good enough. There will indeed be other places that are less hospitable, but still 'good enough.'
And there will be some places we can write off immediately.
jackie, I disagree with nothing you wrote.... but we know about life on precisely one planet, ours. Apparently it's difficult to get life started; certainly we humans do not know how life started here and we've tried hard to understand precisely that.
What do I believe? I believe there's life out there, but I'm guessing that it's rare. It could be silicon-based, electrical, something I cannot even imagine.... but right now we have ONE data point. Further, a discovery of life on Mars or the Moon or Enceladus would not necessarily indicate a separate origin. I'd still be interested though.... but appropriately skeptical.
To those who are convinced that life is common I ask: If life is soon discovered elsewhere, will you just shrug your shoulders and say "Big deal; I already knew that"?
Of course you don't need an Earth clone to have life. Deep down inside everybody knows that were not just looking for life, or for a planet that can support life. We're looking for an Earth clone because it's man's manifest destiny to go there and subjugate that life. Hopefully, sometime before earth gets smashed by a giant asteroid.
Everything else is OK. Yes, we have one data point about where life has started. But if you have a lack of data, you cannot state that life is either easy or difficult to get started. Both statements are not supported. Only thing we do know, is that once it gets started, it has proved to be very adaptable, and grows in places we never dreamed it would in years past. That, I think, this bodes well for finding life elsewhere, if in fact it turns out that life starts easily.
And if we don't find it - at least it should be relatively easy to plant it elsewhere. In a few million years, we could become the "ancient ones" that permeates our science fiction and seeds the galaxy with life. But that's a different storyline... ;)
Well, it seems to have started relatively easy here on Earth, being a result of being in the habitable zone, liquid water that was neither too acid or alkaline, and an atmosphere that was not corrosive. About three and half billion years ago the stromatolites appeared and are still with us.
http://www.fossilmuseum.net/Tree_of_Life/Stromatolites.htm
I suspect that similar senarios are unfolding in many places throughout the Universe even as we speak.
And you know this, how?
Let's see now ... we've found life in the following environments:
These general variations in environments are just a few. I'm sure there are plenty more out there if you dig a little. Wherever there is a niche on Earth, life seems to have adapted to it.
Life can even survive the vacuum and other harsh conditions of space (http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-08/bacteria-survive-553-day-exposure-exterior-iss).
We will eventually find another planet (or moon) with life on it. Intelligent life is probably much rarer, but it's probably out there somewhere too.
psst - Brisaber - I'd bet that flyboy is questioning wilieturner's comment, not yours; you and flyboy posted within a few seconds of each other, and I'd wager that flyboy didn't see your post prior to hit comment.
Ohhhh.... well then, never mind!
Homage to the late, great Gilda Radner.
Hey, what's all this talk about violins on TV anyway?
Just think, when I was was just a young boy in the 1930's, we could only "dream" - know "we" know our "explorers" are just starting out!
The Old Mountain Goat feels GOOD about THIS STUFF!
Sir, my best wishes to you. I would say God bless you but the libs would complain about me exercising my free speech.
One problem with red dwarfs is Superman would never live there.
Um....Krypton orbited a Red Giant that went Super Nova, not a Red Dwarf.
That was the case at the beginning of the George Reeves series. For all other presentations of Superman, the planet itself exploded...
I hope I'm alive when we make contact.
We have... extraterrestrials are already here. President Eisenhower had multiple meetings with them back in 1954, and hundreds of thousands of witnesses have seen them or their spacecraft already. There's no need to go across the solar system to find them.
Cylons?
No, The BORG!
A red dwarf, could be a sun that never developed into a star like ours, or is a red dwarf, a star that is burning out, and getting dimmer as it gets older, and will supernova, in time? Some scientists, say our sun/star, will burn out, and supernova in the future. So, how long will humanity have to find a better planet to live on?
It is believed that our sun does not have enough mass to explode in a supernova. The current theory is that the sun will inflate into a red giant that will engulf the inner planets, including the earth. After this phase it will shed off its outer layer and a white dwarf will be left behind.
No scientists say that. None. Our Sun is too small to ever go supernova. Red dwarf stars are even smaller, and will also never go supernova.
And if our Sun ever did go supernova, no one would be left to say, "you were wrong!! Na, na, na, na, naaa, naaaa."
Most think 4-7 billion years. But it won't go supernova.
The eventual white dwarf that our sun will become will burn out at some point. Scientists pinpoint that at precisely 2.71828 gadzillion years.
At our current level of environmental degradation, I'd say about a hundred years.
Stars tend to get brighter as they get older. A star is basically a nuclear explosion. They keep getting bigger till they finish exploding and then snuff out.
SuperNormalGuy, red dwarf stars are the way they are as a function of their mass. Period. They won't behave like the Sun, because they're not as massive as the Sun. And they won't go nova or supernova, either. Indeed, they've not massive enough to go on to helium fusion when they've consumed their hydrogen. (The Sun is massive enough for this, and will go red giant when it happens).
However, because stars fuse hydrogen at a rate that increases faster than increasing stellar mass, a red dwarf that formed at the same time as the Sun will still be slowly cooking along, still on the main sequence, well after the Sun has become a red giant, and ultimately a white dwarf. (A .1 solar mass red dwarf may burn steadily for as much as 10 trillion years...and peter out quietly, when it finally does.)
Even so, we have something like a billion years before the Sun leaves the Main Sequence and becomes a red giant...if we haven't spread all over the galaxy by that time, it'll be because, for whatever reasons, we went extinct.
Plenty of time to think about it.
Our sun is destined to become a white dwarf in the next 5 billion years. Before our sun reaches the white dwarf phase it will go through two separate "giant phases". Our star does not have enough mass to get beyond the carbon fusion phase. Stars that go supernova have enough gravity to continue fussing elements up to iron. The fusion of iron requires more energy than it creates so in a short amount of time after iron fusion begins, the iron core collapses at 1/3 of the speed of light only to rebound and explode the star. This is the only time that elements heavier than iron are created.
Just waiting for the inevitable "we found this because god wanted us to, it's all his glory blah ba-blah ba-blah" post, but so far only intelligent people have posted in here....oh well.
I don't know 8.1
Ferro, I think 8.1's been wearing too tight a hat for way too long.
Regardless, life as complex as human beings is probably still very rare. M class stars flare violently throughout their lives. There is no evidence that suggests that red dwarfs go through billions of years of stability even though the lives of red dwarfs may reach into trillions of years.
Planets closer to their star cover more of the disc from our perspective ?????? That doesnt sound right.
50,000 years to go 13 LY's with today's technology, I just read it would take 75,000 years to go 2.4 LY's to the Alpha Centaury system (about 38-40,000mph) which IS our modern technology...Voyager slingshot.
What propulsion system is being referred to here, I know of no functioning equipment that will attain such speed? Alan Boyle, fill'r up please.
The Centauri system is 4.3 light years (give or take) from Sol.
Yes, Tony, you're right...dyslexic...meant 4.2 LY
There are 31,536,000 seconds in a year and light travels at 186,000 miles per second.
So, in one year, light will travel 5,865,696,000,000 (that's 5.86 Trillion miles).
So, in 13 light years, light will travel: 76,254,048,000,000 (76.25 Trillion miles).
That means that this red dwarf system is 76.254 Trillion miles away.
As far as I know, current propulsion systems can get us up to speed of about 150,000 mph with a gravitational boost from the sun (see Helios sattelite http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/spacecraft/q0109c.shtml).
So, 76.254 trillion / 150,000 = 508,360,320 Hours or 21,181,680 days or 58,032 years.
So the time to get to the nearby stars have a linear relationship to our national debt....
I figured it was something like that, Stargazer.
note it is a moving target, sometimes it is closer sometimes it is further. I figure this is where shintu will come into play. We keep setting up stepping stones, The iss is the first one for example, (the moon SHOULD be the second) and so on until we have stations, manned, out past where voyager is right now. Before long we are setting stations inside another star system. Could well be how we got here. Our leadership is very shortsighted. Note china has been around in one form or another for a very, very long time.
I wish I may! I wish I might! First star I see tonight! We are yet alone!
No matter how much we search, we will never find another planet as suitable for us as the earth. Not only would it have to be in the habitable zone from the star, it would have to be in a system that is old enough to be stable. It would need a moon or two in order to stabilize the seasons so they would be predictable enough to suit our flora and fauna, there would have to be enough oxygen in the atmosphere and no nasty toxic gasses, enough surface water to warm parts of the planet that aren't in the tropics, the orbit around the sun would have to be nearly circular like the earth's is to prevent wild shifts in temperature, and on and on.
And if we did find a planet that fit all those criteria and so perfectly suitable for life, chances are it will already be inhabited and we will have to learn to coexist or take over.
That's why we need to take care of the place that is most suitable for us, the place where all life that we know evolved... our Earth!
"And if we did find a planet that fit all those criteria and so perfectly suitable for life, chances are it will already be inhabited and we will have to learn to coexist or take over."
Maybe, maybe not with intelligent life that would presumably object.
It's also not so clear anymore that a large moon is necessary for axial stabilization.
And there are people dying to colonize Mars, right now. So, we don't need a perfect 'shirtsleeve' planet.
colonize Mars now, we can terraform it later
Mookum. There is a finite number of elements and a finite number of combinations of those elements. Somewhere out there are almost exact duplicates of you and i and everything we know. That our planet is unique is estremely doubtful or that we are unique is extremely doubtful. Too few different types of elements and too few combinations of those elements.
Oh how I love the nay sayers in here. These are all the people passed down from the same genes of those who said, "The earth is flat, you'll fall off the edge."
We are still a young species, just coming out of the jungle. We have a LONG ways to go that is of course if we don't do ourselves in (or Nature).
If you put the data on the table the chance of life being present out in our Universe is extremely high. We are only limited to the tools we have just as humans were limited before Leif Erikson and Christopher Columbus had the necessary tools to explore other continents.
The universe continues to open up to us and I can assure you, we haven't seen nothing yet.
I wonder how far out Niburu is - the planet that orbits a brown or red dwarf within Sol's orbital system on 3,600 year orbit. C'mon Man, you know, the home of the Annunaki, our creators, who fiddled with Earth dna and their own to come up with modern man. This is documented in Sumerian text, and they are referred to in both the Bible and the Book of Jubilees... Turn that Kepler thing around man! (I'm sure they already did, and are not about to tell lil' ol' you n me.)
Ummm, well "rack my balls", ya'll! Your break (ouch!). - RC
(Gee, did men invent every game in this world?)
((Well, that should tell you something, women, RIGHT? (Fair game?))) - RC
Actually, if "The Truth" be known, it was really women who invented the so called "game of life", so let's just hope we are all not losers in "The End", get my drift (would be game players)? - RC
(I am DESPERATELY trying to pass the torch on to the next generation, in case you all can't tell! (Anything else I could possibly add would probably be indiscrete, God forbid for SF!)) - RC
You have to be very, very 'far out' to believe in Nibiru:
http://www.cosmophobia.org/nibiru
Got a very simple question, wolf. You describe religion, which I take with a large grain of salt, but that's ok, everything to everyone. Do you believe that this planet is just less than 5,000 years old? Or that people described in Genesis really lived 600+ to 900+ years?
Answer that, or just take on everything as faith. After all, believing that this is the only habitable planet, is taking on a type of religion, that is the religion of one thing. Much the same thing as the religions you describe.
And please don't think I'm being sarcastic. I'm not. I firmly believe that everyone should believe in his/her own way.
Since wolfmagic evidently believes Zechariah Sitchin's take on Genesis, he's probably not a Young Earth Creationist..
Since wolfmagic evidently believes Zechariah Sitchin's take on Genesis, he's probably not a Young Earth Creationist..
** Sorry for the double post, the new and improved Newsvine gave me an error message the first time - something about error code "bubblegum" ;-)
It's been doing that a lot today.
The problem of a planet being tidally locked could also be solved if life rose on a moon of the planet. Flaring would be the biggest threat, at least to a species like ours. The architecture of life will be the product of its specific environment, just like what happened here (as far as we know), so who knows what it might look like under different circumstances?
If there was a moon then the planet itself would not be locked.
Any third year astrophysicist PhD candidate coulda told you that!
Okay, I think I get it. You are probably right about that. In any case, no problem for a planet with a moon. I am partial to planets with moons. Thanks.
Yeah, the Moon is locked onto Earth...keeps the same side toward us. But in doing so it rotates on its axis once during the period of the orbit around us.
I am hoping Einstein 2.0 is already born and turning 10 next month, so that I may see space travel in my lifetime. Sigh, only 50,000 years to get to the Red Dwarf? It may as well be 10,000,000,000 light years.
Here to hoping Einstein 2.0 appears soon is among us as a child! so we all can travel in our lifetime! Cheers!
It's all relative.
Did you guys get this approved by the republicon Depart of Science Denouncement?
You may be in trouble. That wingnut AG from Virginia - Cuccinnelli - might have to sue you to get you to retract and deny your belief there are other stars out there...
We should be launching probes to go look at these places. They don't have to be fancy and expensive either. Just eyes in the sky.
Just try to get funding for any project that takes 50,013+ years to return any results. But I'm sure Mr. Blah, below, would be more than happy to contribute.
We do, they're called amateur astronomers.
Blah ... blah ... blah ...
... wake us up when you actually do find an Earth-like planet - confirmed! - instead of titillating us with this constant drip-drip of 'news flashes' to keep your funding from drying out.
So, Mr Blah, even if one assumes your ignorant premise to have some truth or basis in reality, what exactly is wrong with exciting the scientific community for at least the partial purpose of gaining more funding?
Amazing how rapidly our understanding of the universe is changing. In other areas, we now see a theoretical basis for some things that could move faster than light, or around light. Our imagination is our only real limit.
There will always be those that play it down. They said Columbus would fall off the edge of the world. Same people probably complained how absurd the wheel was, and how it would come to nothing.