It was a good week for astrobiology. Within days of NASA’s announcement that the necessary ingredients for life likely exist in the Saturn moon Enceladus' subsurface ocean, scientists gathered at Stanford University to discuss discovering life outside the solar system. 

Noting how "the search for life in the universe has been transformed from speculation to a data-driven science," speakers like Stanford physicist Peter Michelson offered detailed plans for finding life on exoplanets. 

Over the course of two days on April 20-21, dozens of scientists attending the Breakthrough Discuss conference contemplated options for exploring planets in other star systems. These options include using a new generation of powerful telescopes for long-distance observations, as well as advancing a first-of-its-kind technology to visit other star systems — all within the next generation. [10 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life]

What these strategies have in common is a focus on observing habitable-zone planets in our local stellar neighborhood. In this neighborhood alone, within 30 light-years or so of our solar system, astrobiologists have already identified several potentially Earth-like exoplanets and dozens of systems that may harbor Earth-like worlds. 

These exoplanets, identified by the effects they have on their parent star, are rocky and roughly the same size and density as Earth. They orbit their stars at a distance that would allow liquid water to exist on the surface, given the right atmospheric conditions. There is, however, at least one major difference between our planet and these potentially-habitable exoplanets: They aren't circling stars like our sun. 

On the spectrum of stars, our sun is what's known as a yellow dwarf. It's bright, and not terribly large compared to the largest stars in our galaxy. Yet, even middling stars like our sun aren't all that common. Our local stellar neighborhood — and probably the universe as a whole — is filled with many more low-mass stars. There are 20 yellow dwarf stars like our sun nearby and 250 M-dwarfs, a variety of star so small and dim that, despite their abundance, they can't be seen with the naked eye. Over the last three to four years, every single low-mass star we've studied appears to have at least one planet. Usually, they have more than one.

"How common are planets orbiting low-mass stars? Very common indeed," Courtney Dressing, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, said during a presentation at the conference. "For a typical M-dwarf, there tends to be 2.5 planets. One in four of the stars has a planet the same size and temperature as Earth in the habitable zone." 

Dressing's point was that, given the number of M-dwarfs in the local region, there should be at least 60 potentially Earth-like planets in habitable zones within 32 or so light-years from here, and perhaps many more. To date, most of our exoplanet data comes from NASA's Kepler spacecraft, which has focused its search for planets on large M-dwarf stars. In the near future, when the small and medium-sized M-dwarfs are studied, we may discover that closer to one in three stars have an Earth-like planet in the habitable zone.

Apart from their abundance, these low-mass stars offer other advantages to researchers who study potentially habitable exoplanets. M-dwarf planets have tight orbits around their stars because the habitable zones are close in, giving scientists opportunities to view their transits every few weeks. It is during these transits, when the exoplanets pass in front of their stars, that we have the best opportunity to study their atmospheres for signs of life. [5 Bold Claims of Alien Life]

Many conference attendees, including Mercedes López-Morales from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, explained how we will be surveying the atmospheres of the closest habitable-zone planets for signs of life dwelling on the surface or in an ocean. "We're going to look for oxygen," she said. 

Because the rise of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere corresponded with the appearance of life, we frequently use that particular molecule as a marker for the presence of life elsewhere. Also, oxygen likes to interact with other chemicals. If we discover a planet where oxygen is still hanging around in the atmosphere, something, possibly life, is actively making it. So, the search for life will focus on elements and molecules like hydrogen, oxygen, and methane. However, as López-Morales explained, there is a downside to this approach.

"A planet's atmosphere is only 1 percent the size of the planet," she said. "The size of the signal is tiny. You need to collect at least one trillion photons to be very certain that you are truly looking at oxygen."

The good news is that a new generation of telescopes designed for planetary exploration and astrobiology will soon be coming online to help us gather those photons. Around this time next year, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will be getting ready for launch. During its two-year mission, TESS will survey 200,000 stars, including the brighter ones in our local systems. 

The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) in Chile, slated to be operational by 2022, will have a resolving power 10 times greater than NASA's famous Hubble Space Telescope. The GMT will feature a device called the G-CLEF spectrograph, which will be able to see molecules like oxygen in far-off planetary atmospheres. Finally, when the ground-based European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) opens in 2024, it will have more light-gathering-power than all of Earth's current 8- to 10-meter telescopes combined. Astrobiologists are counting on these large telescopes coming online between now and 2024 to identify the prime candidates to look for oxygen and life in our stellar neighborhood.

Even as we anticipate a treasure trove of atmospheric data from these missions, scientists are discovering species that live quite happily without oxygen, light, and other features that we used to believe were required for life. These discoveries highlight how atmospheric biosignatures like oxygen are an imperfect, if tantalizing, way to look for life from afar. The question then becomes: Could there be there another way to look for extraterrestrial life beyond studying exoplanet atmospheres?

Ideally, to definitively identify life on other worlds, we would visit nearby planets like Proxima b, only 4 light-years away, either in person or with a spacecraft. This is the goal of the Breakthrough Starshot initiative. Announced a little more than a year ago, Starshot’s goal, according to its founder, is to "literally reach the stars in our lifetimes." The plan to accomplish this feat involves launching a fleet of very small spacecraft. Starshot will then accelerate these craft to about 20 percent the speed of light using powerful ground-based lasers. This strategy should allow scientists and engineers to slash the time, cost, and weight required to gain an up-close look at planets around other stars, project representatives have said. 

"The goal is to fly a probe very close to a planet and figure out if it has life," said theorist Avi Loeb, chair of Harvard University's astronomy department. "What is the color of the planet? Is it green? Does it have vegetation? Is it blue, are there oceans? Or is it desert-like?" [Laser-Sailing to Exoplanets: Images of the Breakthrough Starshot Concept]

At the conference, NASA engineer Ruslan Belikov premiered simulations of what an exoplanet might look like from Starshot's point of view. Even if the craft were moving at 90 percent the speed of light, the onboard cameras should still be able to pick up signs of large oceans, clouds and land masses that an exoplanet might have, Belikov said.

The hope is that, someday, by combining laser acceleration of these very small craft with cameras and other sensors, we might finally be able to take a firsthand look at habitable-zone planets circling nearby stars, and, in so doing, perhaps definitively find life elsewhere in the universe. Combining data from our new generation of very large telescopes with atmospheric observations of nearby exoplanets around M-dwarfs may help us choose the best targets for small Starshot craft to fly by. 

"We are going to be the generation that is remembered for finding exoplanets. That's a fact," López-Morales said. "Are we going to be also the generation that will be remembered as the first ones who found life on those planets?"

That, indeed, would be the breakthrough of a lifetime. 

This story was provided by Astrobiology Magazine, a web-based publication sponsored by the NASA astrobiology program. Follow Space.com @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Story posted on Space.com. 

Film director Ridley Scott, who delights in terrifying moviegoers with his cinematic blend of horror and science fiction, suggested in a recent interview that the scary prospect of belligerent invading aliens might transcend the realm of sci-fi. According to Scott, hundreds of alien species are "out there" on distant worlds, and Earth's inhabitants should prepare for the worst if they ever decide to visit our planet.

One scientist, though, says that Scott's information about such hostile, and abundant, aliens is off-base and unsupported.

Scott told Agence France-Presse (AFP) about his belief in "superior beings," while fielding questions about his latest movie, "Alien: Covenant," opening in theaters in the U.S. on May 19. He warned that any extraterrestrial travelers who are technologically advanced enough to show up on our doorstep would likely be very intelligent and very hostile. And unlike the scenarios that dominate movies — if we go toe-to-toe with these invaders, we probably won't be the victors, he said.

"If you are stupid enough to challenge them you will be taken out in three seconds," Scott told AFP. [Greetings, Earthlings! 8 Ways Aliens Could Contact Us]

In the interview, Scott explained that "the experts" estimate there are "between 100 and 200 entities" on other planets, following what could be a similar evolutionary path to ours. And if they get here first, our best bet would be to "run for it," AFP reported.

The possibility of intelligent, technologically adept alien life has intrigued science-fiction writers and readers since the French writer Voltaire published his short story "Micromégas" in 1752, describing two extraterrestrial visitors to Earth — one from the planet Saturn and one from a planet orbiting the star Sirius.

Scott has made his own contributions to the genre, most notably with his string of "Alien" movies, which imagine a highly adaptable and morphologically flexible alien species. The so-called xenomorphs breed quickly and are ruthlessly efficient at overpowering humans, either swiftly dismembering them or cultivating them as hosts for their young — luckily, in isolated locations that are far from our home planet.

But though Scott is a skilled sci-fi yarn-spinner, his assessment of real-world alien threats could use a script doctor, according to Seth Shostak, senior astronomer with the SETI Institute, a research institution dedicated to the search for communication signals produced by intelligent extraterrestrial life.

To begin with, Scott's "expert" estimate of 100 to 200 "entities" is entirely unsubstantiated, Shostak told Live Science.

"We have absolutely no data that would tell you what that number might be," he said.

In fact, estimates based on data about known planets and galaxies suggest that the actual number of intelligent extraterrestrial life forms could, in fact, be significantly higher. With approximately 1 trillion planets in our galaxy alone, and about 2 trillion more galaxies, that adds up to…well, it's a lot of planets, Shostak said. [Why Do We Imagine Aliens as 'Little Green Men'?]

To narrow the search a bit, scientists could start by just looking at the trillion planets in our own galaxy, he said. Only a fraction of those planets might be capable of supporting life — perhaps 1 in 10. And maybe only 1 in 1,000 could produce and support life more complex than bacteria, he said.

That gives us about a billion planets in our galaxy that might harbor some type of intelligent life. But over time, life on many of those planets could have already waxed and waned — self-destructed or been wiped out. Perhaps only one planet in a million of those intelligent-life-harboring worlds still support life capable of contacting humans. That adds up to about 1,000 planets that could potentially hold intelligent, extraterrestrial species, Shostak told Live Science.

However, if a planet is more than 70 light-years from Earth, it hasn't yet received any radio signals from us. Its residents, no matter how technologically adept, wouldn't know humans exist yet. Even if long-distance observations of Earth told them we had oxygen in our atmosphere — and thereby some form of life — they'd be very unlikely to travel all this way to look at what might amount to just a lot of bacteria, Shostak added. 

Neither would extraterrestrials be likely to invade our solar system merely to steal our resources, he said. If a civilization is advanced enough that they've exhausted all the resources of their entire star system — every planet, moon and asteroid — and are all out of natural materials, they're probably at a stage where they could create what they needed from simpler materials in their own backyard, rather than traveling across the galaxy for a very limited supply, Shostak said.

It's equally unlikely they'd be showing up because they thought humans would make an excellent addition to their diet, he said.

"To do that, they would have to know that we had something interesting within our bodies that they could metabolize, and their body chemistry would probably be very different from ours," Shostak said.

But Scott did get one thing right: If extraterrestrials are capable of building spacecraft that can transport them to our planet, they certainly would be technologically "superior" to people, Shostak said. And if he saw a spaceship suddenly appear, Shostak admitted that he'd probably do as Scott suggested — and just "run for it."

Original article on Live Science.

Forget plane-pulled banners ― there may be a new way to advertise in the sky.

The Japanese telecom company NTT DOCOMO recently revealed what it claims is the "world's first spherical drone display." Although it appears to be a solid, globe-shaped screen while in flight, the display is actually an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV, or drone) inside a spherical frame with curved LED strips. The LEDs spin rapidly during flight, creating the illusion of a spherical screen. The drone display was showcased April 29-30 during the Niconico Chokaigi conference, a festival of Japan's internet culture.

Though the technology is not yet ready for commercial use, the company said it should be available by March 2019. These flying screens could be used for advertisements during a sporting event, or to display information at a concert, according to DOCOMO. [Photos from Above: 8 Cool Camera-Carrying Drones]

"Going forward, the company will explore potential entertainment and messaging solutions for event venues, including stadiums and concert halls," company officials wrote in a statement. Previously, it was challenging to equip a drone with a spherical display because it  interfered with the airflow of the drone's propellers, according to DOCOMO. In addition,  the display's weight tended to drag down the aircraft. The telecom company solved these issues by using a mostly hollow display, which allows for better airflow and is lightweight.

The spherical frame surrounding the drone has a maximum diameter of about 35 inches (88 centimeters), and the display measures 144 pixels high by 136 pixels wide. The entire device, drone and display, weighs just 7.5 pounds (3.4 kilograms). Since it's relatively small and light, the drone display is highly maneuverable and, according to DOCOMO, could be operated virtually anywhere.

Original article on Live Science.

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