Is There Life In TRAPPIST-1?

The TRAPPIST-1 system is a great candidate for containing alien life due to its respective planets, their chemistry, proximity to the parent star, and early solar formation.

Josh Habka

Dec 29, 2022

8 min read

home, Exoplanets

TRAPPIST-1e is located within the habitable zone of its star, a distance from a star where the planet is hot enough to have liquid water on its surface and, therefore, potentially supports life as we know it on Earth. These planets are roughly the size of Earth, and three of them -- planets labeled E, F, and G -- are thought to lie within its habitable zone, the swath of space around the star at which a rocky planet can have liquid water on its surface, and therefore provide life a chance of rocky planets. TRAPPIST-1 is the only known system in which planets could raise substantial tides against one another, as the seven Earth-sized rocky planets are packed tightly around a cooling star.

The TRAPPIST-1 system, in particular, has three TRAPPIST-1 planets within the star's habitable zone). All seven are located within the star Trappist-1 habitable zone, which may harbor liquid water. Astronomers regard them as the best-known laboratory to explore what might make a planet outside the solar system hospitable to life. In February 2018, closer examinations of seven of the planets suggested some may harbor much more water than the oceans of our solar system, in the form of atmospheric water vapor for the planets closest to the star TRAPPIST-1, liquid water for others, and ice for the ones farther out.

Because dwarf stars are smaller than ours, seven Earth-sized planets need tight orbits to sustain surface water. According to a statement, one such world, TRAPPIST-1e, could potentially harbor liquid water on its surface, potentially supporting Earth-like life. According to a statement, the outer planets--TRAPPIST-1f, g, and h--may all be frozen worlds, depending on how much water formed on the outer planet--TRAPPIST-1f--during its evolution.

Our interior structure and atmosphere models indicate that the TRAPPIST-1 innermost three planets are probably waterless. In comparison, the four outermost planets do not have more than a few percent water, perhaps liquid, on their surfaces. At this point, the sense among astronomers is that it is very unlikely water would be found on the surfaces of the three innermost TRAPPIST-1 planets and that, if water were to exist on the surfaces of the four outermost planets, the amount would not be very large. Based on a number of climate models, TRAPPIST-1e is the one that is the most likely to retain water, and it is also the most likely to have it in liquid form under many different climate conditions.

Much of the climate modeling from various models has focused on this system. A common view would support the idea that a single planet, if able to either expel gas or retain its atmosphere, might be approximately Earth-like and habitable and retain a subsurface ocean. TRAPPIST-1e is the most likely of these planets to harbor liquid water on the temperate surface, and it would be a great candidate to investigate further, keeping in mind habitability. In addition to the potential habitability of TRAPPIST-1 e, the latest climate models suggest TRAPPIST-1b, the closest planet to the smaller star, is too warm to produce the Venusian sulfuric acid clouds, either.

TRAPPIST-1f, the closest planet to its host star, has a mass of 0.7 times the mass of Earth and is probably either moderately moist or humid. All of the Trappist-1 planets orbit their stars more closely than Mercury orbits the Earth, and one year on those worlds only lasts from 1.5 to 18.8 Earth days. TRAPPIST-1d orbits around it at a distance slightly greater than 3 million kilometers, and a year there lasts just 4 Earth days.

The M-dwarf star, which lies in the constellation Aquarius -- named for the Earth-based Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope, a facility that found proof of planets around it for the first time in 2015 -- is surrounded by those planets, which are yellow like our sun. Although its star is roughly 90 times as massive as Jupiter, they are roughly the same size, with planets orbiting at similar distances to Jupiter's largest moons. Planets C and D get slightly more energy from those planets' stars than Venus and Earth get from our yellow sun and could look like Venus, with its thick, uninhabitable atmosphere.

In fact, TRAPPIST-1d could end up looking not just like Earth or Venus but also like the red planet. The star is called TRAPPIST-1. This is not a star that looks anything at all like the sun. This is far smaller, less warm, and two thousand times less bright. The star became the symbol for a new age in our understanding of the universe, that is, a hope that if millions of planets can support life, that on some of those planets, life does, in fact, arise, and that we are not alone out there in space.

One of seven planets orbiting the tiny star, TRAPPIST-1, One of seven planets orbiting the tiny star, TRAPPIST-1, could potentially be able to support life on Earth the way we know it, new climate models have suggested. In 2016, Belgian scientists discovered TRAPPIST-1, a planetary system with one star surrounded by seven Earth-sized, rocky exoplanets (planets beyond the Solar System). One star is surrounded by seven Earth-sized, rocky exoplanets (planets beyond the Solar System. In their early days, life could be possible if those planets had more water than on Earth, Venus, or Mars, says Andrew Lincowski, an astrobiologist at the University of Washington.

Given how TRAPPIST-1s present configuration looks, there may be water on the three in the star's habitable zone - theoretically, at least. Because TRAPPIST-1 is so cool, the habitable zone, in which liquid water can condense onto a surface like that of an Earth-like planet, covers the closest orbits of the planets D, E, F, and G. This means if the planets D were similar to our own, they might harbor water oceans. Although years are shorter in the TRAPPIST-1 system, days are extremely long -- nearly perpetual, since, according to scientists who made this discovery, the seven planets are most likely to be tidally locked, meaning that one side of each planet is always facing the TRAPPIST-1 star.