Margaret Turnbull, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC has winnowed down her list of 17,000 stellar systems that might be inhabited to the five best possibilities. BBC has the story.
Besides being most likely to hold intelligent life, these stellar systems are also the five best choices for us to move to if our current solar system becomes uninhabitable. The key is that they are the most like the system we currently live in.
These stars were chosen because they:
These stars were chosen because they:
- are at least 3 billion years old.
- have at least 50% the iron content of our sun.
- have no companion star.
- are no more than 1.5 times the size of our sun.
- are not variable stars with a lot of solar flares as these tend to be too young.
The five best candidate stars are:
- Beta CVn: a sun-like star 26 light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici (the hound dogs)
- HD 10307: has almost the same mass, temperature and iron content of the Sun
- HD 211 415: has about half the metal content of the Sun and is a bit cooler
- 18 Sco: a near match for the Sun in the constellation Scorpio
- 51 Pegasus: a Jupiter-like planet has been found here, may also host planets like Earth
So, my question is – if Beta CVn is only 26 light-years away and is so much like our system that it might also have intelligent life, why have we not identified radio waves from there yet? Twenty-six years for light (thus radio or tv signals) to get from here to there. They’ve been able to watch “I Love Lucy,” “The honeymooners,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “The A Team,” and even “The Rockford Files.” Why haven’t we seen their radio waves? Don’t they have culture also?
Is intelligence that rare? Are we the first – at least in this neck of the galaxy?
Politics isn’t everything.
Wait!! Do the extraterrestials have politics too??
THE GALAXY SONG
Whenever life gets you down, BooTribbers,
And things seem hard or tough,
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft,
And you feel that you’ve had quite eno-o-o-o-o-ough…
Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That’s orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it’s reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the “Milky Way”.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It’s a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it’s just three thousand light years wide.
We’re thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go ’round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that’s the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space,
‘Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth.
Love this topic, ever since reading a Carl Sagan book on the probabilities of ETI as a young person. It’s got me thinking of an algebra equation. If a group neo-conservatives steal a shuttle and plot a course for Beta CVn 26 light-years away, how many centuries will it take for them to arrive at the new earth-like planet with less that radio era technology, and bomb, imprison and torture the evolving intelligent life there?
Maybe they heard our radio waves, watched I Love Lucy and Gilligan, looked at each other, said “dude, that does not sound like a cool place” and went about their business.
Great diary to read on a Sunday morning.
Ah, yes.
I see you caught the reason for my choices of TV shows. [grin] I could have added Star Trek or East Side, West Side.