This video is part of my continuing coverage of the Trappist - 1 system.
This star system is known to harbor at least 7 roughly earth-sized planets, and may hold
the potential for liquid water on at least one of them.
For the back story on this system, see my previous videos on this channel.
Much new information has come to light about this system, so much so that I'm barely able
to keep up with the veritable snowstorm of scientific papers that have been coming out.
One thing that hasn't changed about this system though are the uncertainties surrounding it,
and it will be a while before any sort of consensus can be made on what these worlds
are really like.
One of the main uncertainties involved with Trappist - 1 was the role of the outermost
seventh planet and how it relates to the inner planets and the orbital stability of the system
as a whole.
This is because in the initial observations that planet had only been observed to transit
once in front of the star.
But, in a paper from March 12, Rodrigo Luger and colleagues report further observations
done with the Kepler space telescope that have narrowed down this planet's orbit and
suggest that Trappist - 1h, which is thought to be larger than Mars but smaller than earth,
could harbor liquid water with the right atmosphere, which would be some mix of hydrogen, nitrogen
and carbon dioxide and could thusly be habitable.
But that's a could be, as with most of the planets in this system.
A big factor here is stability, and that's a question that's in flux.
Planets without stable orbits aren't conducive to life, especially if they occasionally ram
into each other.
So, while it's not yet known just how stable this system is, it seems to be moving into
more stable territory.
A paper from this morning by E.V.
Quintana and colleagues suggests that the presence and characteristics of the seventh
planet actually serves to help stabilize the system according to their models.
Another issue that's recently come to light that affects the habitability of the Trappist
planets comes from a paper by Peter Wheately and colleagues, links to all papers in the
description below.
They suggest that the environment that the Trappist planets orbit in would be one with
very, very high ultraviolet radiation streaming from the star.
UV does not favor life as we know it, and would put some constraints on what sorts of
atmospheres these planets can have.
And there's a further problem, according to a paper by K. Vida and colleagues, the Trappist
-1 star displays frequent solar flares.
This could mean that the atmospheres of these planets, if they have them at all, are continuously
altered by the star's actvity.
That too disfavors life.
On the opposite side of things, another big hurdle as far as the potential for life at
Trappist -1 was the age of this star system.
The Luger and colleagues paper however lays out indications from the star itself that
the system is actually significantly older than originally thought with an age of between
3 and 8 billion years.
This favors the potential for life, our own sun is in that age range at 4.6 billion years-old
and that's proven to be enough time to produce an advanced civilization.
Civilizations are always unlikely and there is no indication whatsoever of one being at
Trappist -1.
But it was still worth it for SETI to take a look, however.
Using the Allen Telescope Array, Seth Shostak and his colleagues searched for radio signals
emanating from this system and the surrounding area.
They found nothing.
But that doesn't close the door for life in general, and indeed, the lack of good atmospheres
might not either.
These planets orbit very close to their star, in fact they all orbit Trappist - 1 closer
than Mercury orbits our sun.
They also are very close to each other, a routine sight on one of these worlds would
be another planet passing by appearing larger than our moon does in our sky.
This would create tidal heating and perhaps subsurface oceans in the grain of Europa might
be possible.
Another thing about this system that stands out is that because these worlds are so close
to each other, they would be prime territory for panspermia, meaning that if one planet
evolved life it could have easily been seeded to the other planets and vice versa.
Multiple abodes favor life long-term.
So what of future studies of these planets?
With the advent of the James Webb Space Telescope on the horizon along with European Extremely
Large Telescope, we should soon have the ability to study the atmospheres of these planets
in some detail.
As noted in a paper by O'Malley-James and Kaltenegger, scientists will want to look
for gases like ozone, if you see that one then the ultraviolet light equation changes
significantly and indeed, that would be a strong indicator of life.
And, as a note for the curious, the original team investigating this world were mainly
Belgian.
Belgium is famous for it's many beers and Trappist is perhaps the most famous of them
leading some to wonder if this system was in fact named after a beer.
As it turns out, technically no.
It's named after the TRAPPIST telescope at La Silla observatory in Chile, though the
team is said to have toasted the discovery with said beer.
But don't feel let down, the telescope itself is named after the beer.
It is a backronym to highlight the Belgian origin of the project, and rumor has it that
the planets themselves are all informally nicknamed by the team after various other
Belgian beers.
Thanks for listening!
I am futurist and science fiction author John Michael Godier and I would like to officially
announce the launch of my second channel!
It's called John Michael Godier II, how's that for imaginative youtube channel names,
link in the description below.
It's dedicated to science fiction and the science behind it and I have already uploaded
a sampling of content to explore and be sure to check out my books at your favorite online
book retailer and subscribe to my channel for regular, in-depth explorations into the
interesting, weird and unknown aspects of this amazing universe in which we live