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New Model Helps Predict Earth-Sized Planets
look over yonder writes "A new computer model created by astronomers from the Smithsonian Center and Astrophysics and the University of Utah predicts that systems which harbour Earth-sized planets will have a fingerprint of a ring of dust orbiting the star. This model will make it much easier for astronomers to locate stars and predict the size of planets orbiting it by simply measuring how bright the star system is at infrared (IR) wavelengths of light. Stars with dusty disks are brighter in the IR than stars without disks. The more dust a star system holds, the brighter it is in the IR."
I wanted to incorporate the details, but just didn't know how to, anyway, if you want details, here you go.
Forgot to add this.
That fact that meteors streak through the sky on a nightly basis is a testament to presence of dust, as are the Zodiacal Light and Gegenschein. Unfortunately there's not much of it. The article is about young planetary systems, which will have much more dust than our own. Mature systems will not have much of an IR component.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
I'm not an astronomer, and I guess I never really thought about doing it this way, but this approach is brilliant. Assuming a suitably precise spectral analysis of IR can be made, both the size and distance of a non-gassy planet can be determined. There would be two possibilities at every value, but I would assume that a planet would suck in nearby dust and debris so that "planets" would be present where there was a deviation from the "even distribution" dust curve, and the value at that peak or valley would determine the size of the planet. The habitable zone of each planet should be relatively easy to determine, and (I assume) that a spectral analysis in the visual spectrum could verify the presence of oxygen and water.
.01c without breaking the bank, this should give us a great idea about where to send probes and, eventually, where to focus any colonisation efforts.
If we ever figure out how to get up to
That being said, I think by the time we, as a people, are advanced enough to travel to another solar system, that we may not be interested in reentering a planetary gravity well once we get there...