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تسجيل مستخدم جديدAtmospheric Habitable Zones in Cool Y Dwarf Atmospheres
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We use a simple organism lifecycle model to explore the viability of an atmospheric habitable zone (AHZ), with temperatures that could support Earth-centric life, which sits above an environment that does not support life. To illustrate our model we use a cool Y dwarf atmosphere, such as $mathrm{WISE~J}085510.83-0714442.5$ whose $4.5-5.2$ micron spectrum shows absorption features consistent with water vapour and clouds. We allow organisms to adapt to their atmospheric environment (described by temperature, convection, and gravity) by adopting different growth strategies that maximize their chance of survival and proliferation. We assume a constant upward vertical velocity through the AHZ. We found that the organism growth strategy is most sensitive to the magnitude of the atmospheric convection. Stronger convection supports the evolution of more massive organisms. For a purely radiative environment we find that evolved organisms have a mass that is an order of magnitude smaller than terrestrial microbes, thereby defining a dynamical constraint on the dimensions of life that an AHZ can support. Based on a previously defined statistical approach we infer that there are of order $10^9$ cool Y brown dwarfs in the Milky Way, and likely a few tens of these objects are within ten parsecs from Earth. Our work also has implications for exploring life in the atmospheres of temperate gas giants. Consideration of the habitable volumes in planetary atmospheres significantly increases the volume of habitable space in the galaxy.
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Several concepts have been brought forward to determine where terrestrial planets are likely to remain habitable in multi-stellar environments. Isophote-based habitable zones, for instance, rely on insolation geometry to predict habitability, whereas
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Habitable zones are regions around stars where large bodies of liquid water can be sustained on a planet or satellite. As many stars form in binary systems with non-zero eccentricity, the habitable zones around the component stars of the binary can o
verlap and be enlarged when the two stars are at periastron (and less often when the stars are at apastron). We perform N-body simulations of the evolution of dense star-forming regions and show that binary systems where the component stars originally have distinct habitable zones can undergo interactions that push the stars closer together, causing the habitable zones to merge and become enlarged. Occasionally, overlapping habitable zones can occur if the component stars move further apart, but the binary becomes more eccentric. Enlargement of habitable zones happens to 1-2 binaries from an average initial total of 352 in each simulated star-forming region, and demonstrates that dense star-forming regions are not always hostile environments for planet formation and evolution.
Observations of exoplanets and protoplanetary disks show that binary stellar systems can host planets in stable orbits. Given the high binary fraction among stars, the contribution of binary systems to Galactic habitability should be quantified. Ther
efore, we have designed a suite of Monte Carlo experiments aimed at generating large (up to $10^6$) samples of binary systems. For each system randomly extracted we calculate the intersection between the radiative habitable zones and the regions of dynamical stability using published empirical formulations that account for the dynamical and radiative parameters of both stars of the system. We also consider constraints on planetary formation in binary systems. We find that the habitability properties of circumstellar and circumbinary regions are quite different and complementary with respect to the binary system parameters. Circumbinary HZs are, generally, rare ($simeq 4%$) in the global population of binary systems, even if they are common for stellar separations $lesssim 0.2$ AU. Conversely, circumstellar HZs are frequent ($ge 80%$) in the global population, but are rare for stellar separations $lesssim 1$ AU. These results are robust against variations of poorly constrained binary systems parameters. We derive ranges of stellar separations and stellar masses for which HZs in binary systems can be wider than the HZs around single stars; the widening can be particularly strong (up to one order of magnitude) for circumstellar regions around M-type secondary stars. The comparison of our statistical predictions with observational surveys shows the impact of selection effects on the habitability properties of detected exoplanets in binary systems.
Identifying terrestrial planets in the habitable zones (HZs) of other stars is one of the primary goals of ongoing radial velocity and transit exoplanet surveys and proposed future space missions. Most current estimates of the boundaries of the HZ ar
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With continued improvement in telescope sensitivity and observational techniques, the search for rocky planets in stellar habitable zones is entering an exciting era. With so many exoplanetary systems available for follow-up observations to find pote
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