Alien Planet Photo: White Dwarfs Aid in Finding Extraterrestrial Life

We know they're out there, or at least, we like to think they are. And luckily, that's exactly what researchers at Harvard and Tel Aviv University are investigating right now. They've written about dying stars, otherwise known as white drarfs, in a recent study, that could be the key to alien planets.

"In the quest for extraterrestrial biological signatures, the first stars we study should be white dwarfs," Harvard astronomy professor Dr. Avi Loeb, who co-authored the study, said in a written statement.

White dwarfs help search for alien worlds, according to the Huffington Post, by observing light from a star and checking to see if it dims at regular intervals - a phenomenon that suggests the starlight is being blocked by an orbiting planet.

An Earth-sized planet could block far more light from a white dwarf than from a Sun-sized star, so scientists wouldn't have to collect so much data to be confident that they'd found a new planet.

Once a planet was spotted orbiting around a white dwarf, the ultimate prize of detecting life-giving substances would be within reach. Oxygen would be "readily detectable" on such a planet, according to the study.

However, for now, technology isn't quite ready, according to co-author Dr. Dan Moaz, a professor of physics and astronomy at the university: "If this were almost the only thing Hubble would do, it would take about 5 years to accumulate the necessary signal. And, because it is in low-earth orbit, it can observe a given target only for some part of the year, so make that about 10 years. So, not practical!"

The study, "Detecting Bio-Markers In Habitable-Zone Earths Transiting White Dwarfs" is forthcoming in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.