Habitable Zones & Global Climate

The Habitability of the Galactic Bulge

By Keith Cowing
Press Release
astro-ph.EP
August 5, 2020
Filed under
The Habitability of the Galactic Bulge
M31
NASA

We present a new investigation of the habitability of the Milky Way bulge, that expands previous studies on the Galactic Habitable Zone.

We discuss existing knowledge on the abundance of planets in the bulge, metallicity and the possible frequency of rocky planets, orbital stability and encounters, and the possibility of planets around the central supermassive black hole.

We focus on two aspects that can present substantial differences with respect to the environment in the disk: (i) the ionizing radiation environment, due to the presence of the central black hole and to the highest rate of supernovae explosions and (ii) the efficiency of putative lithopanspermia mechanism for the diffusion of life between stellar systems. We use analytical models of the star density in the bulge to provide estimates of the rate of catastrophic events and of the diffusion timescales for life over interstellar distances.

Amedeo Balbi, Maryam Hami, Andjelka B. Kovačević

Comments: Published in Life
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA)
DOI: 10.3390/life10080132
Cite as: arXiv:2008.01419 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2008.01419v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Amedeo Balbi
[v1] Tue, 4 Aug 2020 09:03:10 UTC (979 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.01419
Astrobiology

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻