November 30, 2005
As if we didn’t already have enough trouble defining what a planet is, astronomers have now discovered a brown dwarf only eight times the mass of Jupiter. Surrounded by a dusty disk, the object is actually smaller than a number of planets already known to be orbiting other stars. Any miniature solar system that formed […]
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November 29, 2005
M-class red dwarfs have never figured prominently in the SETI search. The reason for this is apparent: such stars, of which Proxima Centauri, Earth’s nearest stellar neighbor, is one, are flare stars. The intense radiation from solar flares should cleanse a planetary surface of life, especially given the close proximity of such a planet to […]
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