Are you looking for a change of scenery?
Are you tired of boring old Earth?
How would you like
a new home away from home?
Really far away from home.
Like, outside our Solar System far.
An exoplanet is a planet
outside our Solar System.
As of March 2020,
we’ve discovered over 4,000 different ones.
So, it sounds like
we have some options
for our interplanetary house hunt,
but we do have a “MUST” on our list
that could make
or break the deal.
Whichever exoplanet we settle on
must be located in something called
a "habitable zone.”
Being in a habitable zone
means the planet orbits around a star,
kind of like our Sun.
The big perk is
that water on this planet
will stay liquid.
Fun fact,
we humans need water to survive,
so this is a biggie.
So we got in touch
with our space realtor,
and they’ve picked out
a cozy little exoplanet
for us to settle on.
Teegarden’s Star b.
Teegarden?
Oh, that sounds like a nice neighborhood!
To sweeten the deal,
this exoplanet is only
12.5 light-years from Earth,
which means it’s one of the closest
exoplanets we’ve found so far.
It has an Earth Similarity Index of 0.95,
which is the highest of all exoplanets to date.
Teegarden's Star b
is a major contender for a settlement.
But before we rent the moving ships,
let’s see what we’re dealing with.
Teegarden's Star b orbits an M-type star,
like our Sun,
only a lot smaller and cooler.
It is located 40 times closer to its star
than the Earth is to the Sun.
The infrared radiation
from the M-type star
would be absorbed by the ice
instead of being reflected.
That means water vapor
and carbon dioxide
can also absorb
and trap infrared radiation.
So, what does this mean for you?
Well, you won’t freeze to death,
so that’s a win in our book.
It takes the exoplanet
just under five days
to complete one orbit of its star.
That’s something
we’ll have to get used to
as it takes Earth 365 days
to orbit the Sun.
Time flies, right?
OK, it sounds good,
but what’s the catch?
I feel like our space realtor
didn’t tell us something.
Is it haunted?
Well, it’s worse.
Teegarden's Star b
is tidally locked.
Tidally locked means
it takes the same amount of time
for a planet to spin once about its axis
as it does to orbit once about its star.
That means that one side
will always face the warming glow
of the star
while the other side faces
the bleak,
perpetual darkness of space.
"Boy ..."
"That escalated quickly."
One side of the planet
will be scorching hot
and the other
in a deep freeze.
That means,
depending on which part we settle on,
we’ll be trapped
in a never-ending day
or night.
Way to bury the lede, space realtor.
So, after hearing all that,
maybe we took our planet for granted.
Sure, Earth has its problems.
But we’re in a nice habitable zone,
and our planet is full
of rich ecosystems.
Maybe we should treat Earth
like a fixer-upper
and take care of it,
instead of looking for planet B.
But all this talk about space travel
has us thinking,
what if we settled on moons
instead of planets?
What if we settled on Titan?
Well, that’s a story for another WHAT IF.