Wow I didnt expect this for another 15 years!

Yeah but we can see life through spectroscopy... Maybe one day in my lifetime even night side planetary picts of alien civilisations... This is a major step towards that greater goal.
 
pax said:
Yeah but we can see life through spectroscopy... Maybe one day in my lifetime even night side planetary picts of alien civilisations... This is a major step towards that greater goal.
Click to expand...
I'd like to think it's impossible that we're the only planet with (somewhat)intelligent life, I'd like there to be another advanced alien race with uber technoligy that they'd be willing to share with us, but I dunno 8)
 
First thing to say is ... don't get your hopes up. If you read the paper they're very cautious about saying that the red blob is is truly a companion. They make a statistical argument, but statistical arguments have a tendency of coming round and biting you in the arse (on average of course :D). To confirm the companion status, they'd certainly need multi-epoch imaging, and that might take years.

Next... don't get your hopes up about life. There have been a number of projects like this going on for some time now. The key elements are that they concentrate on imaging planets around smaller, low luminosity stars, and on finding planets that are a very long way from the host star.

In this case the separation would be 55AU (assuming the star is 70 parsecs away). Bear in mind that in our own Solar system the outer planet Pluto is around 40AU from the Sun. So take a smaller, less powerful star, place a planet further from it than Pluto... I think you can see the impliciations for life!

If it's confirmed, it's a very nice result though. I know one or two people who work in the field who will be a bit pissed off -- one of whom already has a similar result and is waiting for the multi-epoch imaging to confirm before publishing! Sometimes in science, doing the "right thing" gets you scooped.
 
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