The search for planets that might support life may have just become much more focused.
The M dwarf, the most prevalent form of a star in the universe, was long thought to be the source of neighboring planets with atmospheres, potentially rich in carbon and ideal for the origin of life. But in a recent investigation of a planet 66 light-years away from Earth that orbits an M dwarf, scientists found no evidence that such a planet could even retain an atmosphere.
It's doubtful that a planet might support life without a carbon-rich atmosphere. After all, carbon molecules are regarded as the foundation of life. According to research coauthor Michelle Hill, a planetary scientist and Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Riverside, the results are also not encouraging for other kinds of planets orbiting M dwarfs.
According to Hill, the pressure from the star's radiation is so strong that it might completely destroy the atmosphere of a planet.
M dwarf stars are well recognized for being unstable, spitting forth solar flares and dousing neighboring celestial bodies in radiation.
The latest research, which was released in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, suggests that the nearby M dwarf may be too powerful to preserve the atmosphere.
Similar occurrences occur in our solar system, when the sun, the nearest star to Earth, causes its atmosphere to deteriorate. The difference, according to the study, is that Earth has sufficient volcanic activity and other gas-emitting activity to replace the air loss and make it scarcely perceptible.
The study's focus was the M dwarf planet GJ 1252b, which "might have 700 times more carbon than Earth has, and it still wouldn't have an atmosphere. According to study co-author and astronomer Stephen Kane of UC Riverside, it would initially build up before tapering off and eroding away. The latest research, which was released in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, suggests that the nearby M dwarf may be too powerful to preserve the atmosphere.
Similar occurrences occur in our solar system, when the sun, the nearest star to Earth, causes its atmosphere to deteriorate. The difference, according to the study, is that Earth has sufficient volcanic activity and other gas-emitting activity to replace the air loss and make it scarcely perceptible.
The study's focus was the M dwarf planet GJ 1252b, which "might have 700 times more carbon than Earth has, and it still wouldn't have an atmosphere. According to study co-author and astronomer Stephen Kane of UC Riverside, it would initially build up before tapering off and eroding away.
Scientists from UC Riverside, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, the University of Maryland, Carnegie Institution for Science, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, McGill University, the University of New Mexico, and the University of Montreal participated in the investigation into GJ 1252b's atmosphere, which was directed by astronomer Ian Crossfield at the University of Kansas. With the aid of the James Webb Space Telescope, the most potent space telescope to date, scientists anticipate learning much more specifically about these kinds of planets.
The TRAPPIST-1 system, which is "also an M dwarf star with a number of rocky planets around it," will be the next target for Webb, according to Hill.
There is a lot of hope that it will be able to tell us whether or not those planets are surrounded by an atmosphere, she continued. The fans of M dwarfs are probably holding their breath right now to see if we can determine whether those planets have atmospheres.
However, there are still a ton of intriguing places to look for habitable planets. There are still around 1,000 sunlike stars very close to Earth that potentially have their own planets circling inside habitable zones, according to the UC Riverside post on the study, except planets farther away from M dwarfs that may be more likely to sustain an atmosphere.
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