Friday, March 29

The Terminator zone: the place where there would be life on exoplanets | Digital Trends Spanish


The exoplanets they can have all sorts of strange environments, and one feature that’s relatively common to find among exoplanets but doesn’t exist among planets in our solar system is tidal lock. This is where one side of the planet always faces its star and the other side always faces out into space, so one side gets incredibly hot while the other side is icy. That doesn’t sound like a comfortable environment for life, but recent research shows that it’s possible that these exoplanets could be habitable in the narrow band that separates the two sides.

Known as the “terminator zone,” this is the ring around a planet between the hot side, called the dayside, and the cold side, called the nightside. This zone separates two very different climates. “This is a planet where the dayside can be scorching, well beyond habitability, and the nightside is going to freeze over, potentially covered in ice. You could have big glaciers on the night side,” explained lead researcher Ana Lobo of the University of California, Irvine, in a paper. release.

Some exoplanets have one side permanently facing their star, while the other side is in perpetual darkness. The ring-shaped border between these permanent day and night regions is called the “terminating zone.” In a new article in The Astrophysical Journal, UC Irvine physics and astronomy researchers say this area has the potential to support extraterrestrial life. Ana Lobo / ICU

The researchers modeled such planets using the same software used to model Earth’s climate, but adjusted for factors such as planetary rotation. They found that despite the existence of extreme temperatures nearby, the termination zone could be an appropriate temperature for liquid water to exist on the surface, the essential component for potential habitability.

However, there needs to be a balance of water and land on the planet for this to work. If the planet is mostly covered in water, it would evaporate on the dayside and engulf the planet in steam. But if enough soil is present, this acts as a stabilizing force to allow liquid water to remain on the surface.

“We’re 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 be very promising,” Lobo said.

This research is exciting because it broadens the range of planets we could examine when looking for evidence of life beyond Earth. Tidally locked planets often exist around M dwarf stars, which are dimmer than our sun and are some of the most common stars in the galaxy. If any of these stars harbor such planets, the pool of exoplanets where we can search for life expands considerably.

“By exploring these exotic climate states, we increase our chances of finding and properly identifying a habitable planet in the near future,” Lobo said.

The research is published in The Astrophysical Journal.

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