{"id":19422,"date":"2016-03-30T21:00:21","date_gmt":"2016-03-30T13:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/seti-institute-launches-radio-search-for-alien-life-amid-20000-red-dwarf-stars\/"},"modified":"2016-03-30T21:00:21","modified_gmt":"2016-03-30T13:00:21","slug":"seti-institute-launches-radio-search-for-alien-life-amid-20000-red-dwarf-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/seti-institute-launches-radio-search-for-alien-life-amid-20000-red-dwarf-stars\/","title":{"rendered":"SETI Institute launches radio search for alien life amid 20,000 red dwarf stars"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_240861\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-240861\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-240861\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/160330-dwarf1-630x458.jpg\" alt=\"Red dwarf planetary system for SETI\" width=\"630\" height=\"458\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/160330-dwarf1-630x458.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/160330-dwarf1.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-240861\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">An artist\u2019s conception shows a planetary system around a red dwarf star. (Credit: ESO)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The SETI Institute is shifting the focus of its search for extraterrestrial intelligence to places that could harbor life that\u2019s not as we know it: 20,000 red-dwarf star systems.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRed dwarfs&nbsp;\u2013 the dim bulbs of the cosmos&nbsp;\u2013 have received scant attention by SETI scientists in the past,\u201d SETI Institute engineer Jon Richard said today in a news release announcing the initiative. \u201cThat\u2019s&nbsp;because researchers made the seemingly reasonable assumption that other intelligent species would be on planets orbiting stars similar to the sun.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Red dwarfs are nothing like the sun: The brightest of the breed are a tenth as luminous as the sun, and some are just 0.01 percent as bright. But astronomers say they account for three-quarters of all stars.<\/p>\n<p>The star that\u2019s closest to our sun, Proxima Centauri, is a red dwarf. A&nbsp;variety of observing efforts, including the Pale Red Dot initiative, are looking&nbsp;for planets around Proxima Centauri.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"The Last Star in the Universe \u2013 Red Dwarfs Explained\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LS-VPyLaJFM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Astrobiologists had assumed that red dwarfs put out too little light to support life on alien planets, but that was before astronomers started finding Earth-sized worlds in close orbits around distant stars. Now it\u2019s thought that 6 percent or more of all red dwarfs have potentially habitable, Earth-sized planets.<\/p>\n<p>Another plus for the prospects of red-dwarf life is that such stars are amazingly long-lived: Astronomers have already detected a super-Earth known as Kapteyn b that orbits an 11.5 billion-year-old red dwarf. That makes the star and the planet 2.5 times older than Earth.]<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis may be one instance in which older is better,\u201d SETI Institute astronomer Seth Shostak said. \u201cOlder solar systems have had more time to produce intelligent species.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The red-dwarf search is being conducted using the institute\u2019s Allen Telescope Array, a network of linked radio telescopes that was built amid the Cascade Mountains of Northern California using seed money from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_240859\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-240859\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-240859\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/160330-reddwarf2-630x420.jpg\" alt=\"Red dwarf planet\" width=\"630\" height=\"420\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/160330-reddwarf2-630x420.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/160330-reddwarf2-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/160330-reddwarf2-1240x826.jpg 1240w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/160330-reddwarf2.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-240859\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This artist\u2019s impression shows a sunset seen from the super-Earth Gliese 667 Cc. The brightest star in the sky is the red dwarf Gliese 667 C, which is part of a triple star system. The other two more distant stars, Gliese 667 A and B, appear to the right in the sky. (Credit: L. Calcada \/ ESO)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The targets are being chosen from a list of about 70,000 red dwarfs compiled by Boston University\u2019s Andrew West. SETI astronomers will check targeted systems over several frequency bands between 1 and 10 GHz.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRoughly half of those bands will be at so-called \u2018magic frequencies\u2019 \u2013 places on the radio dial that are directly related to basic mathematical constants,\u201d SETI Institute scientist Gerry Harp said. \u201cIt\u2019s reasonable to speculate that extraterrestrials trying to attract attention might generate signals at such special frequencies.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Past searches by the SETI Institute have targeted about&nbsp;1,000 nearby sunlike stars&nbsp;\u2013&nbsp;as well as stars where&nbsp;NASA\u2019s Kepler telescope detected planets, and even the oddball \u201calien megastructure\u201d star known as KIC 8462852.<\/p>\n<p>Although there have been some intriguing false alarms, no signals from extraterrestrial civilizations have yet been detected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An artist\u2019s conception shows a planetary system around a red dwarf star. (Credit: ESO) The SETI Institute is shifting the focus of its search for extraterrestrial intelligence to places that could harbor life that\u2019s not as we know it: 20,000 red-dwarf star systems. \u201cRed dwarfs&nbsp;\u2013 the dim bulbs of the cosmos&nbsp;\u2013 have received scant attention [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4666,5568,1874,3754],"class_list":["post-19422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-alien-megastructure","tag-allen-telescope-array","tag-astrobiology","tag-seti"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19422"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}