Could This Exoplanet Harbor Life?
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Hey Shore Wavers, Regina Barber here. And Emily Kwong. With our bi-weekly science news roundup featuring the hosts of All Things Considered. And today we have the legendary Elsa Chang from LA. Thank you for having me yet again. So what are we learning about today? So Elsa, we're giving you an update on the chances of life on an Earth-sized planet that orbits another star.
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All right, Elsa, where do you want to start?
Let's start with the Earth-sized planet around another star. Gina, go.
Okay, so astronomers have already discovered more than 6,000 exoplanets, and those are planets that are orbiting other stars, not our sun. And some of them are more promising spots to look for life than others, like this exoplanet called TRAPPIST-1e. And this planet is rocky like Earth. It's the same size. It's orbiting at a distance that's smack dab in the habitable zone of the star, sometimes called the Goldilocks zone.
Yes, it's at this really interesting distance from its host star. It gets a little bit less light than Earth does, but way more than Mars does. If there's life on it, we have the best chances of detecting it if it's present on TRAPPIST-1e.
That's Sukrit Ranjan, the lead author of a recent study about TRAPPIST-1e published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters. Now, what Sukrit is saying is that we have the best chances of finding life there in the Goldilocks zone as opposed to some of these other exoplanet systems.
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