Imagine a neighborhood in the cosmos that receives exactly the right amount
of star warmth and where the conditions are ideal for the thriving of life
as we know it. How many of these heavenly sweet spots do you believe the
Milky Way galaxy has? Although the absence of evidence suggests that
extraterrestrial life is exceedingly rare, a recent research suggests that
it may really be incredibly prevalent.
About one-third of the planets that revolve around the most prevalent stars
in our galaxy, or the hundreds of millions of worlds that make up the Milky
Way, according to an analysis done by astronomers from the University of
Florida, may be able to hold liquid water and possibly support life.
More than 150 planets circling these typical stars, often known as red
dwarfs or M dwarfs, were analyzed by UF astronomy professor Sarah Ballard
and PhD candidate Sheila Sagear. These Jupiter-sized stars are far more
common than our very uncommon Sun, but they are also smaller, colder, and
approximately half as massive.
Ballard and Sagear utilized datasets from NASA's Kepler telescope to learn
more about exoplanets circling their host stars and the Gaia telescope to
calculate the distance to stars in the galaxy. They estimated how long it
took the planets to traverse the faces of the stars in order to determine
the planets' orbits.
"The distance is really the key piece of information we were missing before
that allows us to do this analysis now," stated Sagear.
According to their findings, an orbit becomes more eccentric as it becomes
more oval-shaped. A planet's eccentric orbit might also subject it to tidal
heating if it is circling close to its star. Tidal heating occurs when a
planet is stretched and deformed due to shifting gravitational forces on its
eccentric orbit, and the friction that results in this process heats the
planet up. At its most severe, this warmth may fry the globe, turning all of
the liquid water into vapor.
Additionally, the team discovered that planet-rich red dwarfs were more
likely to have the type of circular orbits that enable planets to have
liquid water. On the other hand, stars with only one planet were more likely
to experience tidal extremes that sterilized the surface.
About two-thirds of the planets were discovered to be vulnerable to
roasting based on the study's sample size. The other one-third was placed in
a Goldilocks location that was close to life and soft enough to support
it.
This discovery implies that the Milky Way easily has hundreds of millions
of viable targets to search for indications of life outside of our solar
system when extended and applied to the larger galaxy!
Because attention is turning to this group of stars, I believe that this
result will have a significant impact on exoplanet research during the next
ten years. These stars provide great targets for searching for tiny planets
in orbits where it's possible that liquid water may exist, making the planet
potentially livable, Sagear continued.
