habitability tagged posts

These in-between regions could be prime sites for liquid water. In a new study, University of California, Irvine astronomers describe how extraterrestrial life has the potential to exist on distant exoplanets inside a special area called the “terminator zone,” which is a ring on planets that have one side that always faces its star and one side that is always dark.

“These planets have a permanent day side ...

A NASA artist’s impression of Earth as a frigid “‘snowball” planet. New research from the University of Washington indicates that aspects of an otherwise habitable-seeming exoplanet planet’s axial tilt or orbit could trigger such a snowball state, where oceans freeze and surface life is likely impossible. Credit: NASA

Aspects of an otherwise Earthlike planet’s tilt and orbital dynamics can severely affect its potential habitability – even triggering abrupt “snowball states” where oceans freeze and surface life is impossible, according to new research from astronomers at the University of Washington...

An artist’s impression of a flare from Proxima Centauri, modeled after the loops of glowing hot gas seen in the largest solar flares. An artist’s impression of the exoplanet Proxima b is shown in the foreground. Proxima b orbits its star 20 times closer than the Earth orbits the Sun. A flare 10 times larger than a major solar flare would blast Proxima b with 4,000 times more radiation than the Earth gets from our Sun’s flares. Credit: Roberto Molar Candanosa / Carnegie Institution for Science, NASA/SDO, NASA/JPL.

Flare illuminates lack of a dust ring; puts habitability of Proxima b in question. Astronomers have detected a massive stellar flare – an energetic explosion of radiation – from the closest star to our own Sun, Proxima Centauri, which occurred last March...

An image of Saturn’s haze-shrouded moon Titan taken by the Cassini spacecraft. The UW-based Virtual Planetary Laboratory studied records of the haze on early Earth to see how such atmospheric conditions might affect an exoplanet, or one beyond our solar system. They found that such a haze might show the world is habitable, or that life itself is present. Credit: NASA

An atmospheric haze around a faraway planet – like the one which probably shrouded and cooled the young Earth – could show that the world is potentially habitable, or even be a sign of life itself. In new research, UW doctoral student Giada Arney and team chose to study Earth in its Archean era 2 ½ billion years back, because it is, as Arney said, “the most alien planet we have geochemical data for.”

The work builds on geol...