Astronomers find ring-shaped border on some distant planet may support life
By Michael Lee, CTVNews.ca writer
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TORONTO (CTV Network) — A ring-shaped border on certain distant planets known as the “terminator zone” that separates permanent daytime and nighttime could offer conditions suitable to support life, a recent study has found.
Researchers from the University of California, Irvine (UCI) published a study on March 16 in The Astrophysical Journal that says life could potentially exist within a special “in-between” region on exoplanets where one side always faces its star and the other is always dark – creating permanent day and night.
This dividing line between the day and night sides could create conditions where the temperature is not too hot or too cold, the researchers say.
They call this type of hospitable environment “terminator habitability.”
“You want a planet that’s in the sweet spot of just the right temperature for having liquid water,” Ana Lobo, a postdoctoral researcher in the UCI Department of Physics and Astronomy who led the study, said in a news release.
The researchers say this may be the first example of how these types of planets could sustain habitable climates within this terminator region.
Lobo said these types of planets are common and exist around so-called M-dwarf stars, which are relatively dimmer than the Earth’s sun and make up about 70 per cent of the stars seen at night.
The researchers used software normally meant to model Earth’s climate to model the climate of terminator planets.
They say planets with more land could harbour terminator regions more easily than those mostly covered in water, given the water facing the star would likely evaporate and cover the planet in thick vapour.
“These new and exotic habitability states our team is uncovering are no longer the stuff of science fiction,” Aomawa Shields, UCI associate professor of physics and astronomy, said. “Ana has done the work to show that such states can be climatically stable.”
While the study of planets for their potential habitability has mostly focused on those covered by oceans, the researchers say this study could expand the number of viable candidates and potentially help teams using telescopes such as James Webb search for life-supporting planets.
“We are trying to draw attention to more water-limited planets, which despite not having widespread oceans, could have lakes or other smaller bodies of liquid water, and these climates could actually be very promising,” Lobo said.
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