What they are looking for:
- Considerable time is spent determining if a planet is in the "habitable zone" of its star – an orbit in which liquid water can be maintained on the surface – but that alone can not predict whether life will exist.
- "To target the quest for extraterrestrial life, scientists must determine what features of the Earth are essential for the development and maintenance of life for billions of years and whether the formation of such planets is common," says the study. .
Details: While understanding the atmosphere of an exoplanet is a good way to start a hunt for life, scientists will also need to learn about the composition of a planet to determine if it is similar to the Earth.
- "The heart of habitability lies in the interior of the planet," says the study.
- If the nucleus of a world is made up of liquid iron like that of the Earth, it could produce a magnetic field strong enough to protect its surface from harmful radiation, to protect the water and the eventual life on the surface.
Even plate tectonics has an influence on habitability because the earth's crust cycle helps control the climate, the study notes.
"By having these different variables, we can say that it's most likely – among all the planets that have been found – this one is most likely to be livable or to be the most Earth-like, "wrote co-author of the study, Anat Shahar, the Carnegie Institution for Science told Axios.
And after: Although scientists have discovered thousands of exoplanets so far, very few of them are potentially habitable. However, as more powerful telescopes come online, researchers should better understand the secrets these planets can hide.
