NEW YORK: The warmth of a sun has long been thought to abe a key ingredient to life. But astronomers say ‘rogue’, sun-less planets that wander the stars could still harbour extra-terrestrials.
While it sounds like science fiction, these planets may offer scientists a new avenue in their search for alien life.
This is according to Sean Raymond, an astrophysicist with the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Bordeaux in France, who has taken a look at how life can form on rogue planets. Writing in Aeon, he says: ‘To have any chance of life – at least life like our own – a free-floating Earth would need liquid water.’ A planets needs to keep warm for liquid water to form, and without the sun, this heat would have to come from its interior.
‘A layer of ice on a planet’s surface can act as a strong insulator, locking in a planet’s heat,’ claims Raymond. ‘If the ice layer is thick enough, then a planet can maintain an ocean of liquid water beneath the ice.’ He calculates that the ice layer needs to be at least 10 km (6 miles) thick to prevent it from freezing for billions of years. Raymonds comments echo a similar conclusion reached by scientists in Chicago several years ago. They calculated that life can cling on to a planet for billions of years without a star to provide a direct source of warmth. Research by astrophysicists Dorian Abbot and Eric Switzer from the city’s university discovered that heat would come from the breakdown of radioactive elements inside the planet’s core.
The scientists named their discovery a ‘Steppenwolf’ planet because they claimed any life found there would ‘exist like a lone wolf wandering the galactic steppe’.
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