Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a nearby star

Re:Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a ne... by CWuestefeld on Tuesday June 18, 2019 @09:41AM (#20212852)

This was my first thought, too, when I saw the article.

But our thoughts about the effects of tidal lock on the emergence of life is little more than philosophy, having only one datapoint to extrapolate from, at that one not being tidal locked.

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Re:Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a ne... by bmurphy1976 on Tuesday June 18, 2019 @10:22AM (#20213316)

I think there are other loopholes. Imagine a Jupiter sized planet that had an Earth like moon. The Jupiter size planet would probably be tidally locked with the star, but the moon could be tidally locked with the planet, not the star. Given that, it would have quite a varied and complicated day/night cycle.

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Re:Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a ne... by quakeguy on Tuesday June 18, 2019 @11:06AM (#20213899)

Interresting setup you mention there, the earth-like planets d/n cycle would indeed be very irregular i imagine, depending which orbital speed it would have.

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