Habitability Of Tidally Heated H2-Dominated Exomoons Around Free-Floating Planets

Exomoons around free-floating planets (FFPs) can survive their host planet’s ejection. Such ejections can increase their orbital eccentricity, providing significant tidal heating in the absence of any stellar energy source.

Previous studies suggested that liquid water could exist on such moons under thick CO₂-dominated atmospheres, but these models faced challenges with CO₂ condensation and atmospheric collapse, particularly in the high-pressure regimes that favoured long-term habitability.

To address this, we employ a self-consistent model, including radiative transfer and equilibrium chemistry with condensation, to simulate a more stable hydrogen-dominated atmosphere for a range of initial chemical compositions, including C, O, and N.

We find that such atmospheres can effectively trap heat via collision-induced absorption of H₂, maintaining surface temperatures suitable for liquid water for time-scales of up to 4.3 Gyr, depending on the surface pressure, while not prone to condensation-induced collapse. Wet-dry cycling caused by the strong tides together with the alkalinity of dissolved NH₃ could create favourable conditions for RNA polymerisation and thus support the emergence of life.

David Dahlbüdding, Tommaso Grassi, Karan Molaverdikhani, Giulia Roccetti, Barbara Ercolano, Dieter Braun, Paola Caselli

Comments: Accepted for publication in MNRAS
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2602.05378 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2602.05378v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2602.05378
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Submission history
From: David Dahlbüdding
[v1] Thu, 5 Feb 2026 06:57:22 UTC (107 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.05378

Astrobiology,