Habitable Zones & Global Climate

Habitability And Sub Glacial Liquid Water On Planets Of M-dwarf Stars

By Keith Cowing
Status Report
astro-ph.EP
March 8, 2023
Filed under , , , ,
Habitability And Sub Glacial Liquid Water On Planets Of M-dwarf Stars
Habitable Zone boundaries as a function of stellar type and radiative flux received from the host star, relative to Earth. Long-dashed lines represent the extended boundaries due to subglacial liquid water suggested in this work: blue for the inner HZ boundary (night-side ice evaporates) and red for the outer one (Martian polar lakes). Green and blue lines denote the inner (runaway greenhouse) and outer (maximum CO2 greenhouse) HZ boundaries, respectively, using the 1-D model 10 . Also marked is the Recent Venus model (medium-dashed blue line), and the 3D Global Climate Model for slowly and rapidly rotating planets 9 (short-dashed red and black curves, respectively). The grey line marks the tidal locking radius 8 . The circles denote Venus, Earth and Mars as well as a few exoplanets. Adaptation from Fig. 3 of Yang et al. 9 — astro-ph.EP

A long-standing issue in astrobiology is whether planets orbiting the most abundant type of stars, M-dwarfs, can support liquid water and eventually life.

A new study shows that subglacial melting may provide an answer, significantly extending the habitability region, in particular around M-dwarf stars, which are also the most promising for biosignature detection with the present and near-future technology.

Amri Wandel

Comments: 6 pages, 2 figures, Nature Communications
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Popular Physics (physics.pop-ph)
Cite as: arXiv:2303.04474 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2303.04474v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Amri Wandel
[v1] Wed, 8 Mar 2023 09:46:57 UTC (1,296 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.04474
Astrobiology

Keith Cowing

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) 🖖🏻

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