Scientists believe that extraterrestrial technology could be sought at HD 110067, where six planets orbit harmoniously around a central star.
Discovered in 2023, HD 110067 features a central orange dwarf star surrounded by six planets with perfectly resonant orbits, suggesting the possibility of life existing there.
The planet closest to its host star completes its orbit in 9.1 Earth days, while the others have orbital periods of 13.6, 20.5, 30.8, 41, and 54.7 days. Consequently, the resonance ratio between adjacent pairs in the system is 3:2, 3:2, 3:2, 4:3, and 4:3.
The “dancing” six-planet system HD 110067 – (Photo: Thibaut Roger, NCCR Planets).
According to a recent study published in the journal Research Notes of the AAS, this orbital resonance allows the six Neptune-sized planets to maintain a stable environment over billions of years.
Some of these planets even show signs of water on their surfaces. They have remained stable and undisturbed for at least one billion years after fully forming around the 4 billion-year-old host star.
The research team, led by astrophysicist Carmen Choza from the SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence – USA), calculates that this stability and duration provide a good opportunity for life to emerge, evolve, and develop.
In fact, that life may have evolved to the point of forming extraterrestrial civilizations, capable of developing technologies detectable from afar.
According to Science Alert, the SETI team has also attempted to search for signals from extraterrestrial beings in this system using the Green Bank Observatory (USA), but has yet to capture any expected signals.
However, this does not imply that the dancing six-planet system lacks life, as life on Earth—a much older planet—can only transmit signals up to about 100 light-years away.
HD 110067 is located 100 light-years from us, but their technology may not yet have advanced enough to overcome this distance.
Nonetheless, the authors state they will continue searching for concrete evidence, as model estimates indicate a high likelihood that HD 110067 contains worlds with extraterrestrial civilizations.
