The discovery of a new Earth-like planet could shed further light on what makes a planet habitable

Aug 30, 2024
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Im still waiting for MARS or Venus.
It seems odd that a team of international scientists, even after the discovery of yet another exoplanet, should say that the discovery of such a planet "could shed light on what makes a planet habitable" when they already live on a habitable planet.
 
It seems that this article has a lot of premature hype and not much actual news.

An Earth-sized planet was discovered around a very non-Sun-sized star, and we don't yet know much about the planet. We see that the red dwarf star is not having the usual level of flares we think is typical of red dwarf stars. So, maybe it has not blown the atmosphere off of this Earth-sized planet. But, maybe it had flares earlier in its existence, and this planet's atmosphere is long-gone before the red dwarf quieted down.

So, before getting all excited, shouldn't we first determine whether this planet even has an atmosphere?

And, if it does have an atmosphere, is it more like Venus, or Earth's atmosphere?

The real story here is that we have found an Earth-sized planet that is close enough that we think the Webb telescope will be able to answer those questions for this planet. But, this planet is not in an environment that is anything like what Earth is in. It may be tidally locked to its star, for instance.

So, what this is really doing is providing the possibility of an exception to the thinking that red dwarf stars are not good places to look for planets with life. It seems like even a positive finding would be viewed as an exception.

Would that really change the probability the Drake Equation gives for extraterrestrial life, compared to what we think about the frequency of more Sun-like planetary systems?
 

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