By Mark Zastrow
BU News Service

Alien worlds may be even more alien than we thought.

For decades, astronomers’ visions of a habitable planet circling distant stars were like holding up a mirror to our own: it had to be rocky (not gaseous like Jupiter), at just the right distance from its star to support liquid water (not too hot, not too cold), and orbiting a friendly yellow star like our own.

But within the last two years, scientists analyzing data from NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler space telescope have overturned that last assumption. It seems we were blinded by our biases; it turns out that the stars that hold the most rocky planets with just the right temperature are not like the Sun. Instead, they are a long-overlooked class of stars, the most common in the Galaxy: the diminutive M dwarfs. Now, astronomers are paying attention to them. If these systems harbor alien life, we might be able to detect them in less than ten years.

Compared to the Sun, M dwarfs are puny, with half the mass and half the diameter at most. They’re cooler, with surface temperatures that max out at 6700º F, compared to the Sun’s 10,000 ºF.  They give off a faint red glow much dimmer than the Sun’s fiery yellow. To be warm enough to support liquid water, any planet orbiting such a star would have to be close. The star would loom large in the sky, causing tides so great, they would stop the planet’s rotation. One side would be locked into perpetual day, the other in eternal night.

Until recently, astronomers had no reason to think there would be many of these planets around M dwarfs. To be honest, M dwarfs were kind of an afterthought,” says Andrew Howard, who coauthored an August 2012 study of Kepler’s first batch of data when he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California–Berkeley. NASA had launched the space telescope in 2009 specifically to find habitable worlds around stars like the Sun. But when Howard and his team ran the numbers on Kepler’s first 1200 exoplanets, they found a surprise: there were many more Earth-like planets around small stars than around those that resembled our sun. They had overturned the very assumptions that begat the satellite’s conception.

These miniature M-dwarf systems filled with rocky planets were an entirely new species of solar system—and highly prized by planet hunters who began to refocus their efforts. “This is where it starts,” says Andrew West, an astronomer at Boston University who specializes in M dwarfs. “When this came out, I was just like, ‘Holy crap. That is awesome.’”

Confirmation soon followed. In January 2013, a Caltech team led by astronomer Jonathan Swift published another analysis of the Kepler data showing that planets seemed to be everywhere—on average, one for each of the 300 billion M dwarfs in the galaxy. The next month, Courtney Dressing and David Charbonneau of the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced they’d found an error in the Kepler database that had been overestimating the size of most M dwarfs. This was even better news because astronomers measure the sizes of Kepler’s planets relative to the size of their host stars. If the stars were actually smaller, then so were their planets, meaning a lot more of them are Earth-sized.

With these revised figures, Dressing and Charbonneau concluded there’s a 95% chance that an Earth-sized planet that could support water around an M dwarf is less than 17 light years away, a tiny distance on a galactic scale. If the Milky Way’s diameter of 100,000 light years were shrunk to the size of the United States, that planet would be just a stroll across Central Park.

There’s no consensus yet as to why M dwarfs have so many rocky planets. One leading theory is that since stars and their planets are born out of the same cloud of gas, a small star simply doesn’t have enough leftover material to make large gaseous planets such as Saturn and Jupiter.

Whatever the reason M dwarfs produce rocky planets, it’s a lucky break for astronomers. With the limits of today’s technology, it’s also much easier to find Earth-like planets around M dwarfs than around stars like the Sun. That’s because it’s hard to find planets just by looking—they tend to hide in the glare of their bright stars. Instead, astronomers search for signs of the planets’ influence on their host stars.

They use two main methods. The first is to detect the gravitational wobble of the star as its planet pulls on it ever so slightly. As the star rocks toward and away from us, its light shifts between bluer and redder colors due to the same effect that causes the sound waves of a train’s whistle to shift pitch as it rushes past us. It’s easier to detect this shift in a tiny M dwarf because it gets yanked around harder than a more massive star. Plus, any habitable planets produce an even larger wobble because they are so close to their M dwarfs.

The other method for finding planets is to monitor a star’s brightness, hoping for a planet to wander in front of it, blocking some of its light and temporarily dimming it each time it “transits” its host star. NASA’s Kepler mission exploited this to great effect, using it to discover thousands of likely exoplanets. This, too, is easier with a small M dwarf because the planet blocks out a greater fraction of the star’s light.

Astronomers salivate at the sight of transits for another reason: it gives them the opportunity to detect life. A planet that transits also disappears behind its host star on the other side of its orbit. This allows astronomers to measure the star’s light alone. Then, they can subtract the starlight from their previous measurements, isolating the effects of the planet and its atmosphere.

After NASA’s next-generation James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launches in 2018, one of its projects will be using this technique in an attempt to find the chemical footprints of organic molecules in exoplanet atmospheres. According to Jonathan Lunine, a planetary scientist at Cornell and member of the JWST science team, it will focus almost entirely on M dwarfs to maximize their chances.

Despite these advantages, any claim that a planet around an M dwarf is truly “habitable” comes with caveats. One is that the stars’ strong magnetic fields twist and writhe, releasing enough UV radiation to sterilize the planet. Life on Earth copes with similar flares from our own Sun, which occasionally disrupt satellite communications, but they’re much weaker—“microscopic in comparison,” says Howard.

Another worry is that when a star is born from its nebulous nursery of gas and dust, all that coalescing material keeps the young stars hot well into middle age. In an M dwarf, this period lasts much longer than a sun-like star—so long, that it could boil away a young planet’s oceans. “You basically get a Venus scenario,” says Gibor Basri, an astronomer at UC–Berkeley and an early proponent of M dwarf studies.

If there are oceans on planets around M dwarfs in which life can spawn and flourish, there is one thing working in its favor: time. As the M dwarf ages its rotation slows down, weakening its magnetic field and reducing the amount of UV radiation. So even if James Webb doesn’t discover any life around M dwarfs in our epoch, West is optimistic that life will have a chance in the future. Unlike our Sun, which will run out of fuel, sputter itself away, and die within 4 billion years, M dwarfs are “the VW Beetles of the galaxy,” says West. They can last for up to trillions of years—thousands of times older than the current age of the universe. “It may just be we haven’t been around long enough to really see M dwarf habitability,” he says. “You could imagine that when the first round of M dwarfs’ [magnetic fields] really shut off, then maybe life sets up. … We might be at the wrong time.”

By: Sara Knight
BU News Service

Last month astronomer Erik Petigura announced it was likely that our galaxy may have up to 40 billion Earth-like, habitable exoplanets swirling around their Sun-like stars. Petigura’s conclusion, which resulted from his analysis of Kepler satellite data, marks a huge milestone in the search for exoplanets – a field that has experienced a rapid expansion in the past decade. The ultimate goal of this extra-solar quest – to find planets with conditions able to support life as we know it – is only attainable if researchers can not only locate these other worlds, but discern their composition. Given that the nearest exoplanet is 4.37 light-years, or 26.22 trillion miles, away from Earth, it is no simple task. So how do researchers find and analyze alien worlds?

It comes down to tenacious observation and a lot of math. First, astronomers must set a satellite or telescope to record a given patch of space – for example, the Kepler satellite focuses on an astral window of about 100,000 stars. Then they wait for minute fluctuations in the amount of light a star gives off, which indicates a body, maybe a planet, passing in front of the star. Researchers confirm the light-blocking object as an exoplanet only after noting that the light fluctuates in a regular pattern, which can take years depending on the length of the planet’s orbit.

Once the light-blocker is verified as a planet the researchers ascertain its volume and mass. Luckily for them, finding the planet’s volume is relatively straight-forward – the amount the star’s light dims as the planet passes by denotes its size. Finding the planet’s mass is trickier: researchers must determine the strength of the gravitational attraction between the planet and star. The larger the attraction, the more massive the planet. The star itself is also “in orbit” around the center of mass between itself and the planet – it is just so massive that its orbit is more of a wobble than a proper ellipse. As the star wobbles, the frequency of its light changes in the visible spectrum – a phenomenon known as the Doppler effect. By observing these fluctuations, astronomers can figure out how much a star wobbles, and therefore the mass of its orbiting planet.

After obtaining the figures for the planet’s volume and mass, finding the planet’s density is as simple as dividing the mass by the volume. Once astronomers figure out the density, they can extrapolate the sorts of materials that may make up the world. For example, an exoplanet with an extremely high density is probably composed of heavier materials, like rocks and metals.

In 2010, astronomers began using light frequency analysis not only to find the mass of the exoplanet, but also to infer its atmospheric makeup. While the planet passes between the star and their observation point, the chemicals in its atmosphere will give faint light signatures, which astronomers analyze using a chemical spectroscope. By noting which elements shift in the star’s chemical lineup when the planet passes by, they can infer the chemicals present in the exoplanet’s atmosphere.

So far, astronomers have found a huge variety of alien planets – some made mostly of metal and with 20 Earth-hour years, others made mostly of super-hot gas and that have silicate glass particles as rainfall. While the exoplanets with what we on Earth would consider extreme conditions are the coolest to read about, the ones that are able to sustain liquid water most interest astronomers. Those relatively ho-hum planets reside in the habitable zones of their stars – zones that astronomers believe life as we know it in our solar system may exist. And despite the report that there are probably 40 billion of them out there, we have only spotted twelve of them so far. But by remembering the scope of our search this humble figure seems a little less discouraging. After all, we can only focus on a small fraction of space at a time and stars are oriented randomly throughout the Universe – who knows what we’re missing?

By: Sara Knight
BU News Service

Astrobiologist Jack T. O’Malley-James and his team detailed their efforts to predict how life on Earth will end in the beautifully titled study “Swansong Biospheres.” Despite appearances, their end goal is not to depress us with a reminder of mortality and the non-permanence of everything we know and love. Rather, they seek to know what might happen to life here to know what to look for on similar but older worlds out there.

Our sun’s gradual warming and eventual exhaustion of nuclear fuel sets off the ticking clock in the background of the study. One day, the sun will find itself with no more core hydrogen to burn and will be so bummed-out it will collapse in on itself in disappointment (or because of gravitational attraction, maybe). By contracting, the sun will pull in more hydrogen to its center, setting off a rapid chain of reactions – increasing its luminosity and sparking a great expansion. It is at this point our sun evolves from a cute yellow dwarf into a mature red giant. Scientists mark this graduation date occurring anywhere from 5 billion years to 7.6 billion years in the future.

According to O’Malley-James et al. life will already be several billion years extinct by that point. They estimate that the hardiest unicellular life-forms will be able to cling on to our increasingly blistering planet only up to 2.8 billion years in the future, and then only in the highest latitude regions in caves of ice.

This knowledge allows us to search for life on Earth-like planets at different phases of their evolution. O’Malley-James explained to National Geographic: “A planet in a later stage of its habitable development may appear uninhabited if we only look for the signs of life as we know it on Earth today.”

More Great Information on the End of the World and/or Humanity:

If you are of an apocalyptic bent and 2.8 billion years seems like too long to wait, don’t despair! It really could happen any day now – visit one of the internet’s best websites, Exit Mundi, to read all the different dire scenarios in which our species bows out, or blows out, or fizzles out, or whatever. The site kindly organizes the scenarios either by time (any day now, near future, or distant future) or by category (space, earth, science, religion).
Be warned: Exit Mundi is a huge time-sink, and we may not have all that long left.

By Sara Knight
BU News Service

This past year NASA sent a spacecraft about the size of a standard office desk (4.5’ x 6’ x 4’) equipped with eight observational instruments into Mercury’s orbit. The spacecraft, dubbed MESSENGER, was tasked with reporting back information about that rocky little planet’s geology, magnetosphere, polar deposits, and exosphere.

The MESSENGER team succeeded – it found evidence of past massive volcanic activity, measured Mercury’s core for the first time (it takes up 85% of the planet’s radius), and even found indications that Mercury’s core may be partially liquid.

This is all good news for astronomers and the occasional Mercury aficionado (they must be out there) but why would a Lovecraftian care? Well, the MESSENGER mission also led to the team naming nine previously unglimpsed craters on Mercury’s South Pole. And as directed by the International Astronomical Union’s naming conventions, the craters’ titles honored deceased artists, musicians, painters, and authors.

Rachel Klima, a planetary geologist on the MESSENGER team and a woman of impeccable literary taste, was particularly inspired by one of these craters, which due to its depth and position is cast eternally in shadow – creating a deep, frigid hole of unknowable features. She christened the crater “Lovecraft,” after H. P. Lovecraft, literary father of modern horror and namer of incomprehensible eldritch and celestial terrors.

Ok, so we didn’t actually find any unspeakable, unutterable terrors lurking on Mercury’s South Pole. But, who is to say if MESSENGER had audio capabilities it would not pick up on any “maddening beating of vile drums” or “thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes” coming from with the shrouded depths of the Lovecraft crater? Or perhaps we may have even found the site where “boundless daemon-sultan Azathoth” who “gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time” sits upon his black throne, the sight of which would most certainly drive us insane.

For now all we can see in the Lovecraft crater is darkness. But who can say what is looking back?

By Poncie Rutsch
BU News Service

It’s official: applications for the esteemed colonial voyage to Mars are now competitive. And your chances of getting picked are worse than your chances at getting into every Ivy League college…and also slightly worse than getting struck by lighting in your lifetime.

That’s right. Last year, Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp announced his plan to set up a colony on Mars by 2023. This year, they’re picking a total of 24 people to spend the next ten years training for said journey.

Four people from those 24 will embark on a seven-month journey in 2022. They’ll arrive at Mars in 2023, land in a small vehicle and leave the brunt of their ship in space (too heavy to land). They’ll live in inflatable dwellings with some air and food supplies sent over in advance.

Lansdorp and company will choose location of the settlement based on how much ice there is in the soil. They’ll melt this ice for water and break it apart via electrolysis for oxygen to breathe.

Of course, the documentation starts once Lansdorp and his team start training these 24 people. Reality TV show, 24/7/365. Of course, it won’t exactly be “live” since the delay between Mars and earth is anywhere from 3 to 22 minutes. Supposedly, this TV publicity will pay for most of the funding.

Regarding that 22-minute delay, that means if any sort of emergency takes place, Houston won’t know there’s a problem for 22 minutes. Sending help (via rocketship, of course) will take six months.

Oh yeah, but once you go, you can’t come back. Also, no skyping or phone calls. Only emails, texts, and the occasional video voicemail. Mind you, the delay would make a live conversation a little ridiculous.

Honestly, I don’t understand how 200,000 people have signed up. It’s one thing to go to space but it’s another to go to space and never return. It’s giving up everyone you’ve ever known. But then again, people hide out in Antarctica all the time, so I’m just the wrong demographic.

Mars One thought about this:

“However, there are individuals for whom traveling to Mars has been a dream for their entire life. They relish the challenge. Not unlike the ancient Chinese, Micronesians, and untold Africans, the Vikings and famed explorers of Old World Europe, who left everything behind to spend the majority of their lives at sea, a one-way mission to Mars is about exploring a new world and the opportunity to conduct the most revolutionary research ever conceived, to build a new home for humans on another planet.”

The deeper question throughout all this though is why do we do it? Do we do it to learn, or are we just doing it because we can?

Space research is important, but in order to research, we don’t necessarily have to go there ourselves. The Mars rovers have shown tremendous success – and we don’t have to feed them on the other side.

Perhaps someday it will be critical to repopulate Mars; when we destroy our own planet, for example. But until then, this seems like a classic case of science because we can…and really expensive science because we can, at that.

Needless to say, I’ll be glued to the live stream.

By Cassie Martin
BU News Service