Image copyright Warner BrosAstronomers have discovered a small planet around Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun. But how do astronomers decide whether a planet is hospitable to life?
In the science fiction film Interstellar, astronauts leave a dying Earth in search of a hospitable planet for the human race to settle.
But the first two worlds on their shortlist – deemed "potentially habitable" from a distance – turn out to be nightmarishly hostile on closer inspection. The crew"s first stop is an ocean planet lashed by 1km-high tidal waves, while the second is a deep-frozen world choked by toxic ammonia.
While Christopher Nolan"s movie is fantasy, it draws on a real-life aspect of the work done by astronomers who study exoplanets – worlds beyond our Solar System.
The search for planets capable of supporting life could answer an age-old question: are we alone in the Universe? But what do astronomers mean when they refer to distant worlds as potentially habitable, or Earth-like?
Earth-sized planet orbits neighbouring star
"When we say "potentially habitable" exoplanets that"s a term that refers to measurable qualities of a planet that are necessary for habitable conditions," says Prof Abel Méndez, from the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) at Arecibo.
Two criteria dominate popular discussions of planetary habitability: first, whether it is within Earth"s general size range (and therefore has a chance of being rocky) and, second, whether it resides in what"s known as the habitable – or Goldilocks – zone.
This is the range of distances around a host star where there"s just enough starlight to keep water in liquid form on a planet"s surface. Too close to the star, and the heat will cause water to boil off; too far away and any water will freeze.
These two parameters are useful rules of thumb, but a host of other factors influence how hospitable planets are. Some of these are excluded from the conversation because of limitations in technology.
"As we learn things about what makes the Earth habitable, things like the magnetic field become really important," says Prof Don Pollacco, who researches exoplanets at the University of Warwick.
"We can"t measure the magnetic field of an exoplanet, so we just forget about it."
But other measurable properties of exoplanets are relevant to the life question. To begin with, most "potentially habitable" exoplanets found to date orbit red dwarfs, a name for a category of stars that are smaller, cooler and dimmer than our Sun.
Red dwarfs are the most numerous star type in our galaxy – making up some 75% of the total – but that"s by-the-by. The main reason they predominate is that it"s easier to find low-mass planets around these stars.
Astronomers hunt for exoplanets in two principle ways: the radial velocity – or wobble – method relies on detecting the gravitational pull a planet exerts on its host star, while the transit method makes use of the dip in brightness that occurs when a planet crosses the face of its star.
For the wobble method, it"s easier to detect a small planet tugging on a similarly small star, than a small planet tugging on an object many times its size.
With the transit method, a rocky exoplanet passing in front of a tiny red dwarf will block out more of the star"s light, while the signal of an Earth-sized world passing in front of a bigger, brighter Sun-like star is more likely to be drowned out by the glare.
However, because red dwarfs are dimmer than the Sun, planets need to be located closer in order to receive sufficient energy for water to pool.
This also favours planet hunting, because habitable planets take less time to complete a circuit of their stars – allowing multiple observations to be gathered more easily. But there are some important potential downsides to consider.
The nearer a planet is, the stronger the tidal forces exerted by the host star. This can cause the world to be tidally locked, which means the time it takes to spin on its own axis equals the time taken to complete a revolution of its star. Tidally locked planets always present the same side towards their stars.
The Moon is tidally locked to the Earth, explaining why we always see the same "face". But unlike the Moon, planets tidally locked to their stars would have a permanent day side and a permanent night side.
"The only way heat can get to the cold side is either through the planet itself or through an atmosphere if it has one. Some people have postulated – if it"s hot on one side and cold on the other, somewhere in the middle there must be a temperate zone," Don Pollacco explains.
"Stand five feet one side and you get fried, stand five feet the other side and you freeze," he jokes.
A range of opinions exist on the likely effects of tidal locking on habitability. But lower mass stars tend to be more violent and unpredictable than their more imposing counterparts.
Prof Pollacco and colleagues from Warwick, Queen"s University Belfast and Denmark"s Aarhus University have studied some of the habitable systems discovered by Nasa"s Kepler space telescope.
They found that one host star, Kepler -438, produced "superflares" – bright outbursts which can hurl torrents of charged particles into space. Scientists think these giant eruptions could strip away the atmospheres of nearby planets and barbecue any life that happened to be on the surface.
But Don Pollacco comments: "On Earth, we have life in rocks and 20,000ft under the sea… If you"re that much closer to a major flare, you"re going to know about it. What that means is you have to evolve in a different way."
"We"ve got one system we know where life is and we"re using that as our exemplar… but we have used this reasoning before and found things we didn"t expect to find. Going in armed with a vision of life as it is here on Earth is likely to be wrong."
Dr Jon Jenkins, a co-investigator on the Kepler mission, echoed this view, saying the jury was still out on whether life was more likely to arise in the habitable zones of low-mass stars or those of brighter stars like the Sun.
"In the search for life we really need to be turning over every rock, to see what crawls out," he told BBC News.
Prof Abel Méndez, who leads the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at UPR, says the new planet around Proxima Centauri – which is a red dwarf star – could act as a testbed for different theories.
"If we eventually find out that these stars are so bad for life, it means that 75% of stars in our galaxy are no good… That"s useful to know."
But not all the potential targets for life orbit dim, low-mass stars. In 2015, Nasa announced the discovery by Kepler of a planet somewhat larger than Earth orbiting a star belonging to the same class as the Sun, and with an orbital period very similar to that of our own planet – 385 days.
As an Earth analogue, Kepler-452b stands more or less alone, but the team had to work hard to make their detection.
First, they had to account for data "noise" coming from their sample of Sun-like stars, which turned out to be twice as active as expected. But they also had to contend with interference in the images, which was caused by the way the telescope"s main instrument responded to the heat environment aboard the spacecraft.
While planets in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars are difficult to detect at present, in time astronomers will almost certainly be able to study a large sample of such systems.
This will be made possible by the suite of ground-based and space-based observatories set to go online in coming decades, including the Europe"s PLATO mission, Nasa"s James Webb Space Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) in Chile.
"It"s quite breathtaking to think that 30 years ago – when I was in college – the notion of just detecting an extrasolar planet seemed like science fiction," says Dr Jenkins, from Nasa"s Ames Research Center in California. "It"s going to be very exciting to see what unfolds in the next 30."
One approach to finding life with the next generation of instruments is to look for gaseous signatures of life in exoplanet atmospheres – something Abel Méndez calls "the big next step".
He says this might allow us "not only say that the planet is habitable, but also say that it is inhabited". Prof Méndez thinks a signature of oxygen and methane from a habitable zone planet could provide tantalising hints of biology, but admits it won"t be enough to claim a discovery.
However, a tell-tale sign of life that astronomers can agree on is the presence of gases produced only by artificial means – pollution, in other words. Prof Pollacco calls this "demoralising", but explains: "It must indicate something – probably a technologically capable society."
It"s sobering to think that our first indication of intelligent life could come from a civilisation in the process of ravaging its own planet. But there"s an upside according to Don Pollacco.
"There"ll be someone to talk to eventually that we have something in common with."
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Paul Rincon: Where should we look for aliens?
http://latiendadejm.com/blog/paul-rincon-where-should-we-look-for-aliens/
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