There is a new article over at The Daily Galaxy which discusses the possibility of habitable planets around red dwarf stars – which are abundant in our galaxy and others.
The researchers modeled how reflective ice and snow would be on simulated planets orbiting two real-life red dwarfs. Ice and snow are less reflective against longer, redder wavelengths, while red dwarfs obviously have fairly red light to begin with.
This means the outer edge of the habitable zone around red dwarfs might be 10 to 30 percent farther away from its parent zone than once suggested.
“I was surprised that the effect was as large as it was,” Joshi told Astrobiology Magazine. “The zone where liquid water is stable on a planet’s surface is farther away from such stars than previously thought.”
The science is fascinating. As a science fiction fan I am most interested in what will happen when (okay fine, ‘if’) we have a discovery of a habitable planet. Will it be suppressed? We have to expect that the world’s religions will have a very hard time accepting such an event, if the ongoing hostility towards the theory of evolution is an example. I suspect that whatever astronomers make the announcement will be quickly vilified by extremists of all stripes using the classic ‘if you can’t argue with evidence attack the messenger’ approach.
There is a well-worn SF trope of first contact, but I think something as simple as ‘first evidence’ would be an amazing event. Given the state of our world today, I suspect such a discovery would also be catalytic in almost all areas of our societies, and would probably trigger a period of ‘interesting times.’ What would evidence of another habitable world do to mortgage rates or the stock exchange? What about the next major election in almost every democracy? What effect would it have on existing autocratic systems?