They propose a new method to characterize habitable planets in space

This artist’s rendering shows the possible appearance of the planet HD 219134b, the closest confirmed rocky exoplanet yet found outside our solar system.

Photo: NASA

The to look for planets with favorable properties for life in our solar system and beyond, it is part of the ongoing explorations and analyzes that scientists conduct to improve human understanding of the universe. Despite these efforts, there are still debates in the scientific community about how to determine these characteristics for certain planetary bodies.

Currently, studies of these planets are based on information obtained by orbiting spacecraft or telescopes that allow images of exoplanets to be captured. However, a new study developed by researchers from Caltech, Edinburgh and Toronto universities points to the importance of examining complex geophysical factors such as the way energy and nutrients flow on the planet, which can be used to predict the conditions that will allow life to be sustained in the long term.

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“Time is a critical factor in characterizing habitability,” explained Mark Simons, the John W. and Herberta M. Miles Professor of Geophysics at Caltech. Phys.org. “It takes time to evolve. Being habitable for a millisecond or a year is not enough. But if habitable conditions are maintained for a million years, or a billion? Understanding the habitability of a planet requires a different perspective that requires astrobiologists and geophysicists to talk to each other.”

The presence of carbon and nitrogen (geochemical conditions) that current studies are focusing on reveal, according to the study “instant” habitability of the analyzed planetary mass, which are the properties leading to the development of life as we know it. An example used to demonstrate this methodology is the case of Enceladus, Saturn’s sixth largest moon, which is covered in ice and has a salty ocean beneath its surface. Over the past decade, NASA’s Cassini mission has taken chemical measurements of regions of water vapor and ice grains that have emerged from cracks at the satellite’s south pole and detected the presence of chemical properties favorable to life.

However, to determine its long-term habitability, according to scientists, it is necessary to analyze its geophysical properties, i.e. how long the ocean has been there, how heat and nutrients flow between the core, the inner ocean and the ocean. Surface.

“This paper discusses the importance of including geophysical capabilities in future missions to oceanic worlds, as currently planned for the Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa,” explains Steven Vance, a JPL scientist and deputy director of the Laboratory’s Planetary Science Section, as well as a co-author of the paper.

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In this way, the study tries to focus future missions in a new direction to measure the habitability of planets and other types of objects in space, in which scientists are looking for the necessary conditions for the origin and maintenance of life.

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