Guests: John Batchelor, Professor Jay Farihi, Dr. David Livingston.  Topics:  Finding planetary bodies in the habitable zone of a white dwarf star.  

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John Batchelor and I welcomed Professor Jay Farihi with the University College of London to discuss his work involving the rare find of a planetary body in the habitable zone of a white dwarf star using both ground and space based telescopes.  A good article suggested for your reading titled "Planetary bodies observed for the first time in habitable zone of dead star" can be found at www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220211080603.htm.  During our one segment Hotel Mars discussion, our guest told us how the discovery was made since they were not deliberately looking for such a find.  Jay said it was an extremely rare find but one that needed further verification through the use of more telescopes based on Earth and in space.  During our segment, Jay was asked if the planetary body might be life supporting or would it also be dying as was the case with the star which would now be a white dwarf or dead star.  His answer took us to our outer solar system planets, the very cold temperatures plus a few other things so be sure to hear it.  He was also asked if one could detect bio signs in the atmosphere. He said we were a long ways from that capability but again, listen to all of his answer.  John suggested there would be lots of targets now that this methodology for finding them was known. Our guest replied saying about 95% of all stars were white dwarfs.  Possibly the percentage might be higher so though while very dim and hard to find, there would be "lots of pickings."

Please post your comments/questions for this discussion on our blog for this show.

You can email Mr. Batchelor or Professor Farihi  through me or his faculty page on the UCL website.