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"It's all about the data," says James Hirsch, the lead

Oct. 14, 2017 by Kenneth Newton

"It's all about the data," says James Hirsch, the lead author of the new research paper and president of the observatory. "We could have spotted a star and then found the rest of the system."

To find other red dwarfs, astronomers need to capture the same kinds of data that we would do if we were looking for an orbiting red dwarf. They need to have captured the same sort of detail that astronomers normally don't have: the planet's age. The more information we have about the star, the better the chance that stars are forming and expanding, so we can track the planet's movements over time, making it much more likely for it to be a star, or a gas giant, rather than a planet.

The scientists' new work shows that in this case, the star's orbital inclination can be tracked over time, which we'd expect from the star's mass (which it is about twice as big as the Sun). This makes it likely that it is a red dwarf, not a gas giant, because the star probably has a relatively small mass, according to the study. The researchers think that the star's star is probably not a red dwarf, and therefore there's no chance that the star will be around for long.

"I've not seen a red dwarf star that's the size and mass of the Sun, but I have seen a lot of red dwarfs," says Hirsch, adding that the fact that a star had been orbiting much farther from the Sun than expected and that a red-planet companion would have been in the system for a short time suggests that the planet might have been an early alien.

This is a fascinating study, and I'm excited to see how it will change our understanding of the origin of life on Earth, says Hirsch. "Studying red dwarfs for this type of data is really a new frontier in astronomy, and it will help us understand how we get to know planets as the stars that they are, and how they can evolve. It's really exciting that we've gotten to this point where we can see something new that no one had previously seen, even though we are on the verge of having it, and that will lead to more discoveries."The world's leading computer scientist and inventor has come out against the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), saying it would "kill jobs, destroy our livelihoods, and make our country bankrupt."

In a new interview with The Nation on Friday, James R. Clapper Jr., senior