Could Earth Life Survive on a Red Dwarf Planet?

This artist's illustration shows planets orbiting a red dwarf star. Many red dwarfs have planets in their habitable zones, but red dwarf flaring might mean those zones aren't habitable at all. New research explores the idea. Image Credit: NASA

Even though exoplanet science has advanced significantly in the last decade or two, we’re still in an unfortunate situation. Scientists can only make educated guesses about which exoplanets may be habitable. Even the closest exoplanet is four light-years away, and though four is a small integer, the distance is enormous.

That doesn’t stop scientists from trying to piece things together, though.

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Another Hycean Planet Found? TOI-270 d

Artist's impression of the surface of a hycean world. Hycean worlds are still hypothetical, and have large oceans and thick hydrogen-rich atmospheres that trap heat. They could be habitable even if they're outside the traditional habitable zone. Credit: University of Cambridge

Hycean planets may be able to host life even though they’re outside what scientists consider the regular habitable zone. Their thick atmospheres can trap enough heat to keep the oceans warm even though they’re not close to their stars.

Astronomers have found another one of these potential hycean worlds named TOI-270 d.

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Webb Sees a System That Just Finished Forming its Planets

An artistic impression adapted to highlight gas dispersing from a planet-forming disk. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Nearly 5 billion years ago a region of gas gravitationally collapsed within a vast molecular cloud. At the center of the region, the Sun began to form, while around it formed a protoplanetary disk of gas and dust out of which Earth and the other planets of the solar system would form. We know this is how the solar system began because we have observed this process in systems throughout the galaxy. But there are details of the process we still don’t understand, such as why gas planets are relatively rare in our system.

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The LIFE Telescope Passed its First Test: It Detected Biosignatures on Earth.

LIFE will have five separate space telescopes that fly in formation and work together to detect biosignatures in exoplanet atmospheres. Image Credit: LIFE, ETH Zurich

We know that there are thousands of exoplanets out there, with many millions more waiting to be discovered. But the vast majority of exoplanets are simply uninhabitable. For the few that may be habitable, we can only determine if they are by examining their atmospheres. LIFE, the Large Interferometer for Exoplanets, can help.

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Planets in Binary Star Systems Could be Nice and Habitable

An AI-generated artist's concept of a planet in a binary star system where the orbits may not yet be in alignment. Credit: Michael S. Helfenbein.
An AI-generated artist's concept of a planet in a binary star system where the orbits may not yet be in alignment. Credit: Michael S. Helfenbein.

The Star Wars world Tatooine is one of the most recognizable planets in the realm of science fiction. It’s a harsh place, and its conditions shaped the hero Luke Skywalker in many ways. In the reality-based Universe, there may not be many worlds like it. That’s because, according to a new study out from Yale researchers, the Universe likes to be more orderly, and that affects planets and their environments.

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Some Intelligent Civilizations Will Be Trapped on their Worlds

With thousands of exoplanets discovered so far, astronomers are learning how different planets can be. What if intelligent alien civilizations arise on extremely different habitable worlds? Some civilizations could develop space exploration technologies, but others would be trapped underwater, under ice, or in enormous gravity wells. How could they escape? Image Credit: DALL-E

Evolution has produced a wondrously diverse variety of lifeforms here on Earth. It just so happens that talking primates with opposable thumbs rose to the top and are building a spacefaring civilization. And we’re land-dwellers. But what about other planets? If the dominant species on an ocean world builds a technological civilization of some sort, would they be able to escape their ocean home and explore space?

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If Exoplanets Have Lightning, it’ll Complicate the Search for Life

Lightning on exoplanets could mask some biosignatures and amplify others. Image Credit: NASA/T.Pyle

Discovering exoplanets is almost routine now. We’ve found over 5,500 exoplanets, and the next step is to study their atmospheres and look for biosignatures. The James Webb Space Telescope is leading the way in that effort. But in some exoplanet atmospheres, lightning could make the JWST’s job more difficult by obscuring some potential biosignatures while amplifying others.

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Dying Stars Could Have Completely New Habitable Zones

As stars like our Sun age, their habitable zones shift, and they can warm planets that were once frozen. Image Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

Aging stars that become red giants increase their luminosity and can wreak havoc on planets that were once in the star’s habitable zones. When the Sun becomes a red giant and expands, its habitable zone will move further outward, meaning Earth will likely lose its atmosphere, its water, and its life. But for planets further out, their time in the habitable zone will just begin.

Is there enough time for life to arise on these newly habitable planets?

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Did the Galileo Mission Find Life on Earth?

An image of Earth taken by the Galileo spacecraft in 1990. Credit: NASA/JPL

In the Fall of 1989, the Galileo spacecraft was launched into space, bound for Jupiter and its family of moons. Given the great distance to the king of planets, Galileo had to take a roundabout tour through the inner solar system, making a flyby of Venus in 1990 and Earth in 1990 and 1992 just to gain enough speed to reach Jupiter. During the flybys of Earth Galileo took several images of our planet, which astronomers have used to discover life on Earth.

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Some Young Planets Are Flattened Smarties, not Spheres.

This image from supercomputer simulations shows how some exoplanets form as 'flattened Smarties' rather than spheres. It shows the same planet from the top (left) and the side (right.) The images are from supercomputer simulations of planetary formation. Image Credit: Fenton and Stamatellos 2024.

One of contemporary astronomy’s most pressing questions concerns planet formation. We can see more deeply than ever into very young solar systems where planets are taking shape in the disks around young stars. But our view is still clouded by all the gas and dust in these young systems.

The picture of planet formation just got cloudier with the discovery that some young planets are shaped like flattened candies rather than spheres.

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