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An artist’s’ conception of the planetary sytem of Wolf 1061C
Today Australian scientists announced the discovery of a very interesting exoplanet—a so-called “super-earth” which orbits around the red dwarf star Wolf 1061. The rocky planet (Wolf1061c) is actually only one of three worlds so far found in the solar system of Wolf 1061, but it is of particular note because it lies in an orbit which allows for liquid water to exist upon its surface.
Wolf 1061 is tidally locked to its star, so one side always faces the red ball in the heavens. It has a mass about 4.3 times that of Earth—so the surface gravity is nearly twice that of Earth. Its “years” are 18 Earth days long.
Perhaps most excitingly Wolf 1061c is “only” 14 light years away (about 84,000,000,000,000 miles). It is a neighbor! Perhaps we can use our best telescopes to assay the atmosphere and find out if anything resembling Earth life is there.
Stromatolites at dawn in Shark Bay, Western Australia
This place really exists! Spend a moment imaging what it is like on the surface. In my fantasy, one side of the world is a vast red desert while the other is a desolation of black glaciers…yet in a twilight ring between the sides there are sludgy water oceans filled with big green and violet pillows of fabulous squashed shapes—the analogs of stromatolites. Bubbles of gas pour up from these oddly shaped blobs of bacteria-like cells. Somewhere among the billions of little multiplying alien organisms, a few peptides have changed and the cells begin to exchange genetic material with one another. They are beginning to reproduce sexually instead of merely dividing. Life in the ring oceans of 1061c takes a leap forward. It is all imagination…and yet it may be so. The universe is vast. I wish we could find out more about this entire earthlike planet that we only just found.
ferrebeekeeper 