HSchirmer
Dec 18 2015, 04:00 AM
This has been in the mainstream media for a bit -
Possible super earth orbiting red dwarf Wolf 1061c, only 14 LY away.
JRehling
Dec 18 2015, 05:19 PM
That's an exciting discovery.
I've been planning a blog post summarizing the state of our knowledge of red dwarf systems, but the upshot is:
1) A very high fraction of red dwarfs surveyed appear to have planetary systems.
2) Large planets are rare in these systems, at least close in, so there should be a lot of Super Earths and smaller.
3) We have surveyed almost no smaller red dwarfs which are the most common kind; only stars on the larger, hotter end of the scale. If the trend from K to larger, hotter Ms continues, the findings in (1) and (2) will be even more true, but that remains a matter of speculation until more observations have been made.
4) Accordingly, there could be a lot of planets of earthlike size and earthlike temperature.
5) TESS and JWST should be providing a lot more data in the next few years.