Let the little guys shine. The SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) Institute is setting its sights on the Liliputians of the galaxy – red dwarf stars – in the hope that someone is home.
Over the next two years, the institute will turn the Allen Telescope Array – a group of 42 antennas in northern California that are dedicated to SETI research – towards 20,000 red dwarf stars to listen for radio signals that might be signs of life.
“Red dwarfs were never considered very interesting for SETI in the past, partly because we’re around a star that’s not a red dwarf,” says Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute. And they do pose some problems: red dwarfs tend to be more active than sun-like stars, shooting out energetic flares that could fry nearby planets.
They’re also so dim that their habitable zone – the region around the star where temperatures are right for liquid water – is close enough that the planets there would be tidally locked to the star, showing the same face to it at all times. That means one side of the planet could be drenched in scorching eternal sunlight, while the other experiences a frigid constant night.
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