Hyzeanic realms: unlike Earth, they are much better for searching for life

With a new class of planets, a very big promise for astronomy can be fulfilled: finding extraterrestrial life. What makes these worlds of health special? They provide a good basis for life, but are more common than rocky planets.

Much bigger and warmer, but still fit

In the search for life in the universe, it first seems logical to search for planets that are similar to our cosmic home. But perhaps there is another type of habitable planet that frequently orbits strange suns? This is exactly the question that scientists are now trying to answer Cambridge about dr. Nico Madhusudan can answer yes. They dedicated their new study to the widespread “Henician planets” that had hitherto been in the shadow of the rocky planets. The word “Hyzeanisch”, or English “Hycean”, is a word created by researchers, and is composed of the English “hydrogen”, meaning hydrogen and “ocean”, and directly refers to the composition.
Hycean-Illustration der University of Cambridge / Amanda Smith

These worlds can be up to 2.6 times the size of Earth, a significant increase in previous assumptions about life-friendly worlds: “We’ve shown that hyzean planets can be significantly larger compared to previous considerations of habitable planets,” according to the team atAstrophysical Journal“At a temperature of up to 200 ° C, the atmosphere of the study objects is not particularly attractive. But life, at least in the form of microbes, according to the study, could have found its niche in the huge oceans of this type of planet.

only often

In the search for life, the focus on healthy worlds is with one advantage above all else: the habitable zone, which was calculated for these planets based on different sun types, is much larger than that of Earth-like planets. As a result, they are likely to be found frequently in the data. Dr. said. Madhusudan is loud MDR.

Next step: The team has identified a number of vital signs that must be found in the atmospheres of healthy worlds. Now, that the James Webb Space Telescope is up and running, it is hoped that they will also be able to observe it. “We are identifying a large number of potentially healthy planets nearby that might be ideal targets for such observations in search of the vital signatures of exoplanets.”


exoplanet, ESO, rain, iron
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