WIRED – The best bet for alien life may be in planetary systems very different from ours
In an article from WIRED, Philip Muirhead and other astronomers talk about the split between looking for life around stars akin to our sun or around M dwarf stars.
‘While some astronomers continue to focus on M dwarfs, others still want to target sun-like stars. For now, researchers are poised to learn more about M-dwarf systems, Muirhead says. With the Kepler mission winding down, astronomers are looking forward to the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which is scheduled to launch in 2017. TESS will focus on finding planets around brighter stars, including many M dwarfs. The James Webb Space Telescope, NASA’s successor to Hubble that’s slated for launch in 2018, will then be able to target some of those planets and even analyze their atmospheres. But, Muirhead says, the telescope will only be able to do that for planets around M dwarfs. To target planets around sun-like stars, he says, there will need to be new missions.
Inevitably, resources will become limited, forcing astronomers to choose between focusing their hunt on M dwarfs or sun-like stars, Muirhead says. The decision will depend on what they find in the next few years.’
Read the rest of the Article here: https://www.wired.com/2015/01/alien-life-m-dwarf-planets/