Some questions are implicit in existentialist reflections; just as we question where we come from and why we are here, the question of whether there is life similar to ours in other corners of the Universe cannot fail to come up. In part, space exploration is driven by these motivations, and space agencies invest great efforts in finding planets similar to our own. However, it is necessary to think outside the dominant discourse, and we may have surprisingly interesting news. New research sheds light on this last point, as astronomers have identified a new type of exoplanet where life could thrive.
The Universe harbors different cosmic objects that astronomers have been gradually cataloging through research. Among them are the exoplanets, planets that live outside our Solar System and surround a star other than our own. Previously, life has been sought on exoplanets far from us; however, priority has been given to finding planets similar to Earth. That is because there’s the assumption that the conditions on Earth would be the most suitable to generate life. However, this would be leaving aside the possibility of a different form of life that could develop in conditions unknown to us.
Dr. Nikku Madhusudhan, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge, and his colleagues set out to study potentially habitable worlds. And surprisingly, as part of this search, they managed to identify a new type of exoplanet that could harbor life. They called them Hycean planets. They are up to 2.5 times larger than Earth and have oceans of liquid water beneath hydrogen-rich atmospheres.
A new avenue for the search for life
These researchers explain that, incredibly, Hycean planets appear to be very abundant in the Milky Way. Moreover, they could harbor microbial life similar to the extremophiles that thrive in some of Earth’s harshest environments. “The Hycean planets open up a whole new avenue in our search for life elsewhere,” says Madhusudhan.
Of course, among the Hycean planets themselves, there is a great diversity. They could not all be the same. On the one hand, some of these planets orbit so close to their star that they are tidally locked, with one side of the day hot and the other ruled by darkness. Others, on the other hand, orbit so far from their solar sources that they receive little stellar radiation. But even in both scenarios, the authors raise the possibility of the existence of life.
“It’s exciting that habitable conditions can exist on planets so different from Earth,” says Anjali Piette, also of the Cambridge Institute for Astronomy. Although the search for life itself has not yet begun, now that they have detected a new avenue to search for life, the researchers will focus on analyzing their atmospheres with new astronomical observing devices. If life is found on any of the Hycean exoplanets, it would revolutionize the way we have understood the Universe so far.
Text and photos courtesy of Ecoosfera
Cover photo from Pexels: Kindel Media
Translated by María Isabel Carrasco Cara Chards
