A Multiwavelength Look at Proxima Centauri's Flares
centauri-dreams.org
centauri-dreams.org
It seems like there are planets in most star systems. Even given what's been called a "gross underestimation" of 10^24 stars in the (observable) universe, even if you define some habitable zone based on our n=1 experience, even if you take some away based on the OP paper saying flares might make things a little harder at Prox, then that's still many Sagans* worth of planets, each of which gets a shot at growing telescope builders. That's a lot of chances.
* "billions and billions"
If there were this many, I hope in my lifetime we hear from some, just evidence of other intelligent life.
Here's a paper that estimates the presence of these planets from the Kepler space observatory. https://www.icds.psu.edu/how-many-earth-like-planets-are-aro...
From 2019, it says using data from Kepler, they estimate that a close to earth sized planet (3/4 to 1.5 size of the earth) was in an orbit that could potentially have water vapor from a sun, orbital periods 327 to 500 days, with fairly large error bars:
* somewhere in the range of 1 of every 33 stars to as high as one such planet for every 1 out of 2 stars in our galaxy.
That's a large range, but given we have at least 200 billion stars in just our own Galaxy, that lower bound is about 6 billion stars with somewhat close to earth-distance planets, in just our galaxy. If this is over estimating by a million times, that's still 6 million planets in the earth like orbiting range. So let's make some noise, aliens.
This source says estimates are 200 to 400 billion stars in the milky way. https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/how-many-stars-milky...
But I'm trying to focus on something else, the existence of other intelligent life is the key thing I hope to see. And we could destroy ourselves this afternoon of course.
I don't care as much about do they exist still - that's icing on the cake. It's the idea that we aren't alone, that's the key to me. I'm certain there have been other intelligent civilizations in the universe because of the size, etc. We need evidence to know for sure.
Unless they have some sort of radio beacon that was built so that it lasts forever, we'd have no idea they existed without that beacon. The odds that beacon is pointed in a direction that we could detect is pretty slim. If they were of like minds/ability to detect other stars that would be interesting to say hi to, our Sol might not have existed then. They'd probably be pointing at a star that is now no longer existing.
The universe is big. The universe is old. It's just hard to fathom exactly how small the chances of us finding someone else out there would be even if they do exist. Our squishy lobes just are not equipped to comprehend that type of desolation.
I'm not trying to be a downer, but just have some realistic expectations. Plus, I've seen enough sci-fi to know that this other civilization might not be benevolent, so not knowing about them (and them not knowing about us) could be the better result
unless the radio beam is aimed directly at us, we may not be able to detect the radio communication of other civilizations.
We don't know enough to say whether it is unlikely or not. Pointing to lots of stars and waving your hands doesn't represent an argument.
> Larger stars like the Sun show a mix of radiative transfer – photons being absorbed and reabsorbed as they make their way to the surface – and convection.
> That enhances M-dwarf flare activity as their plasma is twisted and rotated, producing magnetic fields that snap open only to reconnect.
This is the first post I've seen targeted toward generic geeks that explained it that way. It makes total sense, is really cool, and I'm glad they wrote this article.
As a result, and due to their low luminosity, M dwarf stars can go on burning hydrogen for a very long time, perhaps as long as 12 trillion years for a 0.1 Msun star, much longer than the universe has existed so far.