{"id":18826,"date":"2017-08-31T22:00:07","date_gmt":"2017-08-31T14:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/hubble-keeps-hope-alive-for-water-on-potentially-habitable-trappist-1-planets\/"},"modified":"2017-08-31T22:00:07","modified_gmt":"2017-08-31T14:00:07","slug":"hubble-keeps-hope-alive-for-water-on-potentially-habitable-trappist-1-planets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/hubble-keeps-hope-alive-for-water-on-potentially-habitable-trappist-1-planets\/","title":{"rendered":"Hubble keeps hope alive for water on potentially habitable TRAPPIST-1 planets"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_359265\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-359265\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-359265\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/170831-red-dwarf-630x491.jpg\" alt=\"Red dwarf planet\" width=\"630\" height=\"491\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/170831-red-dwarf-630x491.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/170831-red-dwarf-768x598.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/170831-red-dwarf.jpg 786w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-359265\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This artist\u2019s impression shows how the surface of a planet orbiting a red dwarf star may appear. The planet is in the habitable zone, so liquid water exists. (CFA Illustration \/ M. Weiss)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Do some of the Earth-sized planets around a dwarf star called TRAPPIST-1, just 40 light-years away, have liquid water? Newly reported findings from the Hubble Space Telescope give astrobiologists continued cause for hope.<\/p>\n<p>The seven TRAPPIST-1 planets created a sensation in February because they\u2019re the biggest assemblage of Earth-scale worlds known to exist in a single planetary system. What\u2019s more, three of the planets&nbsp;\u2013 known by the letters e, f and g&nbsp;\u2013 are in an orbital region where scientists say water could exist in liquid form.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s thought to be a key condition for life as we know it, which is why the region is known as TRAPPIST-1\u2019s \u201chabitable zone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But is the water really there? To get at that question, astronomers used Hubble to study the amount of ultraviolet radiation received by the planets, and what that might be doing to their atmospheres.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUltraviolet&nbsp;radiation is an important factor in the atmospheric evolution of planets,\u201d Vincent Bourrier, an astronomer from the Observatoire de l\u2019Universit\u00e9 de Gen\u00e8ve in Switzerland, explained today in a news release. \u201cAs in our own atmosphere, where ultraviolet sunlight breaks molecules apart, ultraviolet starlight can break water vapor in the atmospheres of exoplanets into hydrogen and oxygen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"TRAPPIST-1 Planets May Harbor Substantial Amounts of Water\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MRQBimX-a0U?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>After the UV radiation breaks apart the H<sub>2<\/sub>O, some of those hydrogen and oxygen molecules should be cooked out of the atmosphere by higher-energy UV light and X-rays.<\/p>\n<p>Bourrier and his colleagues analyzed data from Hubble\u2019s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, looking for signs of hydrogen surrounding the TRAPPIST-1 worlds. The results on that front were inconclusive, but they were able to measure changes in the strength of the star\u2019s UV radiation.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers factored those readings into a computer model that suggested a large amount of water vapor should have been broken down over the past 8 billion years.<\/p>\n<h4>\u2018Hopes are still high\u2019<\/h4>\n<p>In a paper published by The Astronomical Journal, the researchers say the innermost planets could have lost 20 times as much water as there is in Earth\u2019s oceans. The farther-out planets should have lost far less water \u2013 about than three oceans\u2019 worth each.<\/p>\n<p>Those planets \u2013 such as e, f and g \u2013 might still retain water on their surfaces and in their interiors.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn terms of habitability, this is a positive step forward to say that hopes are still high,\u201d MIT planetary scientist Julien de Wit, a co-author of the study, said in a news release. \u201cThis concludes that a few of these outer planets could have been able to hold onto some water, if they accumulated enough during their formation. But we need to gather more information and actually see a hint of water, which we haven\u2019t found yet.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The team is planning another Hubble observing run to look for clouds of hydrogen that should pass over the TRAPPIST-1 star as the planets make their transits.<\/p>\n<h4>For life, let there be ultraviolet light<\/h4>\n<p>Coincidentally, a different study published in The Astrophysical Journal suggests that ultraviolet radiation may have played a critical role in the emergence of life on Earth by powering the chemical reactions that created ribonucleic acid, or RNA.<\/p>\n<p>That implies that a certain level of UV light, not too much and not too little, might be needed to kick-start life in other planetary systems as well.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt would be like having a pile of wood and kindling and wanting to light a fire, but not having a match,\u201d lead author Sukrit Ranjan, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in a news release. \u201cOur research shows that the right amount of UV light might be one of the matches that gets life as we know it to ignite.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>In addition to Bourrier and de Wit, the authors of \u201cTemporal Evolution of the High-Energy Irradiation and Water Content of TRAPPIST-1 Exoplanets\u201d include E.&nbsp;Bolmont, V. Stamenkovic, P. J. Wheatley, A. J. Burgasser, L. Delrez, B.-O. Demory, D. Ehrenreich, M. Gillon, E. Jehin, J. Leconte, S. M. Lederer, N. Lewis, A.H.M.J. Triaud and V. van Grootel.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>In addition to Ranjan, the authors of \u201cThe Surface UV Environment on Planets Orbiting M-Dwarfs: Implications for Prebiotic Chemistry and Need for Experimental Follow-up\u201d include Robin Wordsworth and Dimitar Sasselov.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This artist\u2019s impression shows how the surface of a planet orbiting a red dwarf star may appear. The planet is in the habitable zone, so liquid water exists. (CFA Illustration \/ M. Weiss) Do some of the Earth-sized planets around a dwarf star called TRAPPIST-1, just 40 light-years away, have liquid water? Newly reported findings [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1874,559,4259,4709,3403],"class_list":["post-18826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-astrobiology","tag-exoplanets","tag-hubble","tag-planets","tag-trappist-1"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18826"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18826\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}