A ring-shaped boundary on some distant planets known as the “termination zone” that separates permanent day and night could provide conditions suitable for life, according to a recent study.
Researchers at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) published a study March 16 in The Astrophysical Journal that indicates life could potentially exist in 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 neither too hot nor too cold, the researchers say.
They call this type of hospital environment “terminator habitability”.
“You want a planet that’s just the right temperature to have liquid water,” said Ana Lobo, a postdoctoral researcher in the UCI Department of Physics and Astronomy who led the study, in a statement. Press release.
The researchers say this could be the first example of how these types of planets could maintain habitable climates in this termination region.
Lobo said these types of planets are common and exist around so-called M dwarf stars, which are relatively dimmer than Earth’s sun and make up about 70% of stars seen at night.
The researchers used software normally intended to model Earth’s climate to model the climate of the terminating planets.
They say planets with more land could harbor termination regions more easily than those mostly covered in water, since the water facing the star would likely evaporate and coat the planet in thick vapor. .
“These new and exotic states of habitability that our team is discovering are no longer science fiction,” said Aomawa Shields, associate professor of physics and astronomy at UCI. “Ana has done the work to show that such states can be climatically stable. »
While the study of planets for their potential habitability has mainly focused on those covered by oceans, the researchers say this study could increase the number of viable candidates and potentially help teams using telescopes such as James Webb to search for life-bearing planets.
“We’re trying to draw attention to more water-limited planets, which, although they don’t have extensive oceans, might have lakes or other smaller bodies of liquid water, and these climates could actually be very promising,” Lobo said.