Dying stars may host earth-like planets with life
Dying stars may host Earth-like planets with life, and scientists might be able to detect them within the next decade, astronomers say.
Researchers have found that we could detect oxygen in the atmosphere of a white dwarf’s planet much more easily than for an Earth-like planet orbiting a Sun-like star. “In the quest for extraterrestrial biological signatures, the first stars we study should be white dwarfs,” said Avi Loeb, theorist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics.
Research by astronomers showed that the closest habitable planet is likely to orbit a red dwarf star — a cool, low-mass star undergoing nuclear fusion. Since a red dwarf, although smaller and fainter than the Sun, is much larger and brighter than a white dwarf, its glare would overwhelm the faint signal from an orbiting planet’s atmosphere.
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