By Alton Parrish (Reporter)
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This graphic shows where a planet can be habitable and warm around our sun, as it ages over billions of years.

Credit:  Cornell University

In their work, Ramses M. Ramirez, research associate at Cornell’s Carl Sagan Institute and Lisa Kaltenegger, associate professor of astronomy and director of the Carl Sagan Institute, have modeled the locations of the habitable zones for aging stars and how long planets can stay in it. Their research, “Habitable Zones of Post-Main Sequence Stars,” is published in the Astrophysical Journal May 16.

The “habitable zone” is the region around a star in which water on a planet’s surface is liquid and signs of life can be remotely detected by telescopes.

 

The distance of the habitable zone as our Sun ages. 

Credit: Ramses Ramírez

“When a star ages and brightens, the habitable zone moves outward and you’re basically giving a second wind to a planetary system,” said Ramirez. “Currently objects in these outer regions are frozen in our own solar system, and Europa and Enceladus – moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn – are icy for now.”

Dependent upon the mass (weight) of the original star, planets and their moons loiter in this red giant habitable zone up to 9 billion years. Earth, for example, has been in our sun’s habitable zone so far for about 4.5 billion years, and it has teemed with changing iterations of life. However, in a few billion years our sun will become a red giant, engulfing Mercury and Venus, turning Earth and Mars into sizzling rocky planets, and warming distant worlds like Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune – and their moons – in a newly established red giant habitable zone.

 

For the first time in human history, we have the technology to search for life and, if it’s there, to find it. Lisa Kaltenegger, professor of astronomy and director of the Carl Sagan Institute, shares what inspires her scientific curiosity, and how Cornell’s scientists work together to search for alien life in a new—and colorful—way. Kaltenegger’s research focuses on the characterization of habitable worlds.

“Long after our own plain yellow sun expands to become a red giant star and turns Earth into a sizzling hot wasteland, there are still regions in our solar system – and other solar systems as well – where life might thrive,” says Kaltenegger.

“For stars that are like our sun, but older, such thawed planets could stay warm up to half a billion years in the red giant habitable zone. That’s no small amount of time,” said Ramirez, who is the lead author of the study.
 

Credit: Ramses Ramirez

“In the far future, such worlds could become habitable around small red suns for billions of years, maybe even starting life, just like Earth. That makes me very optimistic for the chances for life in the long run,” said Kaltenegger.

 

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