Rocky Planets Orbiting White Dwarf Stars Could be the Perfect Places to Search for Life
MAY 1, 2020 BY EVAN GOUGH
Some very powerful telescopes will see first light in the near future. One of them is the long-awaited James Webb Space Telescope (JWST.) One of JWST’s roles—and the role of the other upcoming ‘scopes as well—is to look for biosignatures in the atmospheres of exoplanets. Now a new study is showing that finding those biosignatures on exoplanets that orbit white dwarf stars might give us our best chance to find them.
The new paper is titled “High-resolution Spectra and Biosignatures of Earth-like Planets Transiting White Dwarfs.” The lead author is Thea Kozakis, a doctoral candidate at Cornell University’s Carl Sagan Institute. The study is published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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White dwarfs are intriguing stars, especially when it comes to the hunt for Earth-like planets. Though they’re considered stellar remnants—meaning they have ceased fusion—they still shine. In fact, white dwarfs can remain stable for billions of years after they’ve stopped fusing elements. For billions of years they emit their stored thermal energy, warming any nearby planets. That means that any life on planets orbiting them has stability, and won’t have to deal with deadly flaring or other dangerous circumstances.
An artist’s illustration of a hypothetical exoplanet orbiting a red dwarf. Red dwarfs are prone to intense flaring, and would make it difficult for life to survive on any closely-orbiting exoplanets. Image Credit: NASA/ESA/G. Bacon (STScI)
White dwarfs are also small, meaning telescopes don’t have to contend with a huge shining sphere when they’re trying to study planets next to the dwarfs.
More:
https://www.universetoday.com/145921/rocky-planets-orbiting-white-dwarf-stars-could-be-the-perfect-places-to-search-for-life/
