Planets around red dwarfs and killer electrons

Welcome! “Alien Life” tracks the latest discoveries and thoughts in the various elements of the famous Drake Equation. You may notice that this and future entries are shorter than usual; career, family and book deal commitments have forced me to cut back some of my projects. Now, here’s today’s news:
g Stars - The changing view of planets orbiting low mass stars, M stars, as potentially hospitable worlds for life and its remote detection was motivated by several factors, including the demonstration of viable atmospheres and oceans on tidally locked planets, normal incidence of dust disks, including debris disks, detection of planets with masses in the 5–20 M range, and predictions of unusually strong spectral biosignatures. See article.
g Abodes - A recent study brings new insight into how planets form around red dwarfs, the most populous stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Note: This article is from late 2006. See article.
g Message - What’s it like to be a SETI astronomer, listening for alien radio signals? Note: This article is from 2000. See article.
g Cosmicus - Weather that originates at the Sun, not here on Earth, is responsible for radio waves that cause an unusual shape of two belts of radiation that encircle Earth and contain "killer electrons" that can damage satellites and pose a risk to space travelers, scientists report. See article.

Get your SF book manuscript edited