With all this talk about human colonies on Mars, why not dream a little bigger? Dr. Stephen Kane and his team of researchers at San Francisco State University are looking about 14 lightyears away from our solar system for some potentially inhabitable real estate.
Wolf 1061, a star system not terribly far from our own, has an interesting planet called Wolf 1061c. While scientists have known about the exoplanet since 2015, Kane and his team discovered that it’s squarely within the habitable zone—the region in the solar system where the atmospheric conditions could support liquid water. That said, Kane said that if there’s any life on the planet, it must be living under hostile conditions—similar to those of Venus—since it’s on the inner edge of the habitable zone, relatively close to its star.
“The Wolf 1061 system is important because it is so close and that gives other opportunities to do follow-up studies to see if it does indeed have life,” Kane said, according to Sci News. His team’s findings will published in the next issue of Astrophysical Journal, though a pre-print is available here.
The analysis of Wolf 1061c’s atmosphere could serve as an important case study for scientists looking to determine which exoplanets can support life. But while folks like Kane are analyzing whether or not exoplanets are possibly habitable, other groups, like Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI) are searching for signs of more advanced extraterrestrial life. Doug Vakoch, president METI, told Gizmodo his team has observed Wolf 1061c from their optical SETI observatory in Panama on four separate occasions. Alas, no luck yet.
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http://www.isn-news.net/2017/01/scientists-are-searching-for-life-on.htmlAt least it is not Wolf 359 ;)