Alister's father started by joking that Aliens ran the Centauri Foundation. Later he started to believe it; to the extent that he believed they funded SETI at home in order to collect and decrypt encoded signals.
This part of my story is, like the technologies extrapolated from current developments and research, founded on real science findings and theories.
From Alpha Centauri 3
On February 25, 2008, a team of astronomers released a paper on simulation results which support the conclusions of previous studies that multiple-planet systems could have formed in close orbits around both heavy-element rich, Alpha Centauri A and B. Their simulations suggest that at least one planet in the one to two Earth-mass range could have formed within orbital distances of 0.5 to 1.5 AUs around either Star A or Star B; an important finding was that the simulations frequently generated a Earth-like planet in or near Star B's habitable zone (where liquid water could exist on the planet's surface) which can be detected with three to five years of high cadence observations (Javiera Guedes, 2009). Additional simulation work presented in the paper also indicates that long-term telescopic observations may detect wobbles from such planets using the radial velocity method. Star B, a orange-red dwarf with a relatively calm chromosphere and acoustic p-wave mode oscillations, is an easier target for detecting wobbles from terrestrial planets, possibly within only three years of "high cadence" observations for a 1.8 Earth-mass planet (more from New Scientist and Guedes et al, 2008).
No comments:
Post a Comment