New York University, Abu Dhabi | 2018 Apr 04
Study provides fresh insights into how “giant” planets impact — for better or worse — the habitability of neighboring planets
In a new study ... researchers ... share new findings about how the presence of “giant” planets (between 10 and 1000 times as large as the Earth) affects potentially habitable neighbors that would be discovered with the next generation of ground-based and space-borne telescopes.
The researchers ... report ... that even after planets have formed with enough water on their surface to potentially support life, “giant” planets can continue to change their orbits and impact their continued habitability in positive or negative ways. ...
Studying 147 extrasolar planetary systems with giant planets (with the parameters of these systems taken from NASA’s exoplanet archive), Georgakarakos and colleagues found that, in most cases, the presence of “giant neighbors” would reduce a terrestrial planet's chances to remain habitable, even when the terrestrial planet is on a stable orbit. A stable orbit means that the terrestrial planet is not ejected from the system, or pushed to the outskirts. It is important that the complex gravitational interactions between the star, the terrestrial planet, and its ‘’giant neighbor’’ result in a stable orbit for the Earth-like planet as the development and evolution of life on a planet requires long timescales. ...
Giant Planets: Good Neighbors for Habitable Worlds? - Nikolaos Georgakarakos, Siegfried Eggl, Ian Dobbs-Dixon
- Astrophysical Journal 856(2):155 (01 Apr 2018) DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/aaaf72