Search for habitable exoplanets heats up + Ninth planet search narrowed down

[C C]

Search for Habitable Exoplanets Orbiting Very Cool Red Dwarf Stars
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/201...stars.html

EXCERPT: Promising new calibration tools, called laser frequency combs, could allow astronomers to take a major step in discovering and characterizing earthlike planets around other stars. These devices generate evenly spaced lines of light, much like the teeth on a comb for styling hair or the tick marks on a ruler—hence their nickname of "optical rulers." The tick marks serve as stable reference points when making precision measurements such as those of the small shifts in starlight caused by planets pulling gravitationally on their parent stars....

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Search for mysterious ninth planet narrowed down
http://www.zmescience.com/space/planet-nine-search/

EXCERPT: A couple of weeks ago, two astronomers made waves after they predicted that there’s a ninth planet orbiting the sun somewhere beyond the Kuiper Belt. Mathematical models and computer simulations made by Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown suggest this mysterious satellite, dubbed Planet Nine, is about 10 times more massive than Earth. Now, researchers from France have lend a hand in the search for Planet Nine. Their research narrowed down Planet Nine’s orbit and confirmed there indeed seems to be a massive planet in the far reaches of our Solar System, “but not just anywhere”....

[Zinjanthropos]

I mentioned this on another forum but what if there are planets with life not based on water but liquid hydrocarbons? Saturn's frigid moon Titan is usually included in this group. If it were true then the exoplanet searchers would need to expand their coverage area. I wonder if Planet Nine might qualify.

[C C]

I mentioned this on another forum but what if there are planets with life not based on water but liquid hydrocarbons? Saturn's frigid moon Titan is usually included in this group.

The azotosome would be a hardy membrane, but it's anyone's guess whether living cells based on such developed on the methane/ethane lakes of Titan. Complex life on Earth was a late, challenging, and bordering on fluke event... So needless to say, life on Titan would likely be restricted to simple organisms. Cassini has even detected fog on Titan, but no alt-biochemistry vegetation covering the landscape.

If it were true then the exoplanet searchers would need to expand their coverage area. I wonder if Planet Nine might qualify.

Some extreme objects recently detected are constituted of ice and methane. But they'd have little to nothing in common with Planet Nine other than being closer to it in terms of distance, and their orbits possibly being gravitational signs of it.

P9 probably wouldn't have any seas with methanogenesis potential. Some of the more recent calculations make it out to be more like a mini-Uranus, with a dense hydrogen/helium atmosphere and an iron core surrounded by a layer of ices and rock. It's internal heat might be a 1000 times more than what it receives from the sun. But it's all speculation, quantitatively-derived or not. P9 may not even exist.

[Zinjanthropos]

You never know CC, those frozen wasteland ice cube planets could be The Bahamas for vacationing cryobiological space tourists. Coming to our planet would be like a visit to Hell for them.