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Astronomers Find Planets Around Weird Binary Star
The Bad Astronomer writes "Exoplanets orbiting binary stars have been discovered before, but NN Serpentis is a weird system even in that category. One star is a red dwarf in an incredibly tight orbit around a white dwarf. The white dwarf used to be a star like the Sun but became a red giant as it died, engulfing the red dwarf. Now the two orbit each other almost as closely as the Moon orbits the Earth. Explaining how the two newly detected exoplanets survived such an event is very difficult, and astronomers think they may have actually formed from the material expelled by the star as it died."
Yes, those ideas have been considered. The idea of having life based on other elements was proposed by chemists and biologists in the first place. Silicon is the only one of the ideas that is that plausible simply because it acts chemically similar to carbon. However, it doesn't have nearly as much flexibility in the sort of compounds it can form which makes it unlikely. Most metals don't have anything resembling the necessary chemistry (in general you want something that is on the staircase between metals and non-metals. Otherwise you can't get a large variety of chemistry). EMF is just stupid and seems to be the sort of thing that comes out simply from people thinking of "energy based lifeforms" in Star Trek and other scifi. This idea makes so little sense that it isn't clear where to start explaining what is wrong with it. There might be weird exotic forms of life that we haven't considered but there's not much we can do about it until we have a lot more ideas what is out there, so that doesn't amount to anything scientifically useful. But by all means, continue convincing yourself that your comments somehow buck some scientific establishment that hasn't thought about any of these issues.
It's not an analytical tool, it's there to allow you to reflect on reasons why there could be intelligent life that we haven't seen.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
they're both dwarf stars.
Vertically challenged celebrities.
Completely disregarding how it's (presumably) not possible in this case, etc, it makes me wonder--if intelligent life developed with stars like that, what sort of mythologies would they have to explain their suns' eternal duel?
I mean, hell, we romanticize dawn and dusk, and the moon, and fear the nighttime and eclipses, and we're paranoid about the tiny pinpricks of light that are the stars, thinking they hold great sway over us. They probably wouldn't know that if those two stars actually collided, their lives would all be over--or if they guessed, they wouldn't know why or how--but would they be given personas? What sort of stories would they make up? What would they think the two eclipses symbolized?
I guess as a writer and daydreamer it's just a fascinating idea to toy with.
I'm certain they have. However, considering that life forms based upon "weird alternatives" might be sufficiently exotic that we wouldn't even recognize them as life at first, it seems to make sense to *start* by looking for combinations that we already know work and for which we have established minimum requirements.
/. car (keys) analogy: Think of it this way...when you lose your car keys, do start by looking in likely places you may have left them, or do you start by looking in weird, alternative locations? Likewise, if we have established that life is most likely to occur in conjunction with liquid water, it makes the most sense to took for extra-terrestrial life in areas where liquid water exists.
Requisite
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?