Habitability Of Polar Regions In Tidally Locked Extrasolar Planet Near M-Dwarf Stars

Since the launch of Kepler and Hubble more than a decade ago, we have come a long way in the quest to find a potentially habitable exoplanet. To date, we have already discovered more than 4000 exoplanets most of which are not suitable for sustaining life.

Of all those that can potentially sustain life, A large number has been found rotating synchronously around their parent star, mostly Red dwarf star. Due to their synchronous rotation, these planets receive very uneven stellar heating. Synchronous rotation of these planets causes one side of the planet to permanently face the parent star while the other side remains dark. This results in an extreme climatic condition that is not feasible for sustaining life. Although these theories about exoplanets are well known, a systemic study of habitability of polar regions within an exoplanet using different climate models has not been done yet.

Here I review the current literature on tidal locking and its impact on habitability and introduce the concept of habitability in the poles of these exoplanets. I focus on my understanding of the climatic condition in the polar region of the earth and based on that I present the concept of habitability in the poles of these exoplanets.

Nishith Burman
(Submitted on 26 Mar 2020)
Comments: 4 pages
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2003.11732 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2003.11732v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Nishith Burman
[v1] Thu, 26 Mar 2020 03:51:03 UTC (416 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.11732
Astrobiology