the new exoplanets

This long NASA article first gets you excited about the possibility of life on eight new planets it has just discovered, and then throws cold water (actually, make that lethal X-rays) all over your excitement. Still, the possibility of some kind of “slime” exists, which I guess is something.

Scientists are pondering the possibilities after this week’s announcement: the discovery of seven worlds orbiting a small, cool star some 40 light-years away, all of them in the ballpark of our home planet in terms of their heft (mass) and size (diameter). Three of the planets reside in the “habitable zone” around their star, TRAPPIST-1, where calculations suggest that conditions might be right for liquid water to exist on their surfaces—though follow-up observations are needed to be sure…

Recent findings suggest life would have an uphill battle on a planet close to a red dwarf, largely because such stars are extremely active in their early years—shooting off potentially lethal flares and bursts of radiation…

But so little is known about how life gets its start, and how common or rare it might be in the cosmos, that tenacious life on M-dwarf planets remains a distinct possibility.

However rare life might be, it would make all the difference to find it in just one more place besides Earth. Because if we find it in one more place, and are sure it arose independently of Earth, that would mean it is probably present in many more places. If we never find life anywhere else, we could consider the possibility of seeding other planets with some kind of life from Earth. This way, even if we don’t last forever, intelligent life would have a chance to arise again after a few billion years.

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