Astronomers Look for Potential Life Zones

js7a writes "An Australian team of astronomers has an article in the latest edition Science describing a 'Galactic Habitable Zone,' which contains about 10% of all the Milky Way's stars including the Sun. Stars within this band are likely to have rocky planets large enough to hold atmospheres, are sufficiently distant from supernovae, and have existed for at least four billion years. They haven't actually found any life or earth-like planets yet, but presumably this zone is a reasonable place to narrow such searches."

Comments

Missing the facts for the theories

[Eevee]

Well, 30 years ago people did say that life was likely to be found on "terrestial planets." That's why the Viking missions to Mars had experiments to try to detect life--and why the Voyager and Pioneer missions didn't.

Now, if we have a near-infinite amount of resources, then narrowing the choices down is silly. But, as you might suspect, if we have a very limited amount of resources--and you'd better believe time on the large telescopes is pretty scarce--then trying to use that small amount of resources on the best canidates is sensible.