Closest ever planet which could house intelligent ALIENS discovered

18 days is not its rotational period. it's its' orbit. they suspect it is tidally locked which means whatever rotation it has matches its aspect angle to the star so that the same surface always faces the star.

But as was pointed out there are things that can mitigate or negate being tidally locked. and even a tidally locked planet will have a region at the terminator that moderates the two extremes of the day side and dark side.

another problem with M dwarfs is they are "often" flare stars. I put the word "often" in quotes because all of the M dwarfs i have checked are flare stars. Though i'll admit i only checked the ones withing ten light years or so (ones we might conceivably decide to go to with real and near term physics. ) What this means is the planet which is in closer than mercury is to our own sun has a pretty good chance of being flash sterilized.

Something doesn't sound right about this whole story. 4 times the mass of the Earth, orbits its Sun in just 18 days? Mercury takes 88 days to orbit our Sun, our Moon orbits the Earth in 27 days. I'd say this is a moon orbiting a planet, and it's the total BS of standard model astronomy that makes them interpret Wolf 1061 as a Sun, when it is in reality just a planet. Prove Wolf 1061 is in fact a Sun first. The number of planets they have found with crazily short orbital periods around their Suns should be serious reason to doubt their claims.

The scientific paper specified that Wolf 1016 is a 'non-active' red dwarf, meaning it is not subject to the flaring that some red dwarfs are. Determining the age of a red dwarf is difficult, but they are known to evolve from flaring to non- flaring status, as they age. This star could be quite mature, perhaps even older than our Sun.
Actually, a tidally locked planet does rotate, but at the same rate as it orbits its star. Virtually every celestial body rotates in some manner or other. If a planet did not rotate at all, but kept one side facing the same direction with respect to the distant, 'fixed' stars, it would show all of its surface to its star, in the course of each orbit.

a reply to: spygeek

Thank you very much for your reply. I had not even considered the UV light, that would have very important ramifications at least for the type of life we know. I also have a sneaking suspicion that moons, rather than planets themselves, may well be areas of future research. Particularly those around large gas giants.

The nearer a planet is to its star, the faster it orbits it, due to the increased effects of gravity. The same applies to objects orbiting planets. The Moon, a quarter of a million miles distant, takes nearly a month to complete its orbit of Earth. An artificial satellite in an orbit a few hundred miles from our planet, can do the same in an hour and a half.

a reply to: MystikMushroom

Technology has come a long way since the mid 80's. I remember the same thing being said when I was a kid at school in the mid 80's. We were never told there weren't any, but we weren't ever told there were.

a reply to: GaryN

The star, Wolf 1061 (aka HIP 80824) is magnitude 10, so not visible to the naked eye, but can been seen through binocs and even small telescopes.

It's a star.

Mercury has a distance from the sun on the average of around 0.4 AUs from the sun.

This planet they are talking about has a distance of only about 0.08 AUs from it's sun.

The closer something is to something it orbits, the shorter it's orbital period (hence why Mercury orbits the sun every 88 of our days, but being further out we take 365 days, and going further out, Jupiter takes 12 years). That's how that works.

With the ways that exoplanet detection works, the shorter period the orbit, the faster it is to spot it. Ones with longer periods take longer to confirm.

originally posted by: PsychoEmperor
a reply to: Frocharocha

An 18 Day year? Woah that's fast.

Would that have any effect on the life on that planet?

Seems really really fast... Or is it "all relative" ?

Nice, I'm 749 years old in Wolf 1061c years... I'll be 750 on Jan 2.

a reply to: spygeek

Not before we inhabit Mars first.

"78,000 apply to leave Earth forever to live on Mars"

About 78,000 people have applied to become Red Planet colonists with the nonprofit organization Mars One since its application process opened on April 22, officials announced Tuesday. Mars One aims to land four people on the Red Planet in 2023 as the vanguard of a permanent colony, with more astronauts arriving every two years thereafter.

www.nbcnews.com...

originally posted by: Jonjonj
a reply to: spygeek

Thank you for that and it is a very interesting link. However, I still have a question regarding red dwarf systems, and that is whether such systems could create planets with heavy cores, as heavy metallic cores seem to be the best way to enable planets to hold onto atmospheres due to magnetic effects. Nobody has answered this question as of yet though.

Most of us skip over your question because we don't know the answer. If they're like me, they're waiting to see what the answer is.

a reply to: eriktheawful

Indeed.

The orbital speed (upon which the period is dependent) can actually be calculated quite easily. The formula goes like this:



In other words, to get the orbital speed of a planet around a star, you

-add the mass of the star to the mass of the planet,
- multiply that by 0.0000000000667408 (also called G, for gravitational constant)
-divide the result by the distance between the planet and the star
-and finally square-root the whole thing.

To get the orbital period, just multiply the distance of the planet to the star by 6.28318531, and divide the result by the orbital speed. The result will be the time it takes to complete a full orbit.

originally posted by: Jonjonj
a reply to: spygeek

Thank you for that and it is a very interesting link. However, I still have a question regarding red dwarf systems, and that is whether such systems could create planets with heavy cores, as heavy metallic cores seem to be the best way to enable planets to hold onto atmospheres due to magnetic effects. Nobody has answered this question as of yet though.

A dwarf star is just a very old normal star. The state of the star doesn't really influence the metal content of the planets' cores. What does influence metal content is the nature of the asteroids which formed the planet. Those asteroids are usually created from dust during the star system's planetary formation stage, and this dust itself comes from the material (usually a nebula or the remnants of a supernova) which surrounded the star when it was born.

So, to answer your question, wether a planet has a metallic core depends on the metal content of the dust which existed in the environment of the star system during its youth.



Edit:

By the way,

heavy metallic cores seem to be the best way to enable planets to hold onto atmospheres due to magnetic effects.

Actually any planet with enough mass can have an atmosphere, regardless of the presence of a magnetic core. It is gravity, not magnetism, which enables planets to hold onto atmospheres.

originally posted by: PsychoEmperor
a reply to: Frocharocha

An 18 Day year? Woah that's fast.

Would that have any effect on the life on that planet?

Seems really really fast... Or is it "all relative" ?

If you didn't look at a calendar would you know when a year is up? So you circled the sun, did you realize you finished the circle and began another?

Effects would depend on any tilt in axis and the size, distance and makeup of the sun. Effects on temperature and weather if they have weather.

a reply to: eriktheawful

It's a star.

I don't believe it, and it can not be proved. True, I can't prove it's just a planet, but it would seem to make more sense. If the planet (that I think is a moon) was ever molten, how could it ever attain a spherical shape? The G forces must be pretty high. Anyway, for the mathematicians here, what would be the difference in your weight when on the sun side of the planet vs the other side, where G-forces would be trying to throw you off? Star for the first correct answer.

a reply to: LSU0408

Lol I got an answer from Spygeek, which was very kind and informative.

a reply to: swanne

Thanks for that, I was not sure a red dwarf was always the old form of a star, I thought that in some cases red dwarves formed as that type of star, you know, not big enough for say a sunlike star, but too big for a brown dwarf.

a reply to: Jonjonj

Hehe, I know what you mean.

No, usually stars must have a minimum mass to kick start the fusion in their core. The fusion is driven by gravity. The gravity kind of compress the atoms against one another and this kick starts nuclear fusion.

Additionally, the Sun is actually considered a small star. There's alot of bigger stars out there.

Aldebaran vs Sun:



Deneb vs Sun:

a reply to: swanne

Yes, some stars are ridiculous aren't they? Thanks for clarifying that, I knew about the idea of a critical mass more or less, but I have no experience with real astrophysics on which to make a definition. It is one of the things I regret really, never having taken the time to learn more about physics and such.

a reply to: Jonjonj

Learning about physics and astronomy can become quite a fun hobby. Looks esoteric at first but after a while you can get the hang of it.

You might like this series on Physics: Physics We Can All Understand

a reply to: Jonjonj

I see.. I always post too soon and find out a couple pages later that the question has been answered. DOH!