The star TRAPPIST-1, first found in 1999, is an ultracool red dwarf (or M dwarf). These are the commonest kind of star within the Milky Way, and, presumably, the universe. On account of their diminutive dimension, such stars put out a lot much less power than stars just like the Solar. However pink dwarfs are additionally identified to sport strong stellar winds and violent flares, which has raised questions on how probably it’s for planets round them to be hospitable to life.
“There are ten occasions as many [red dwarfs] within the Milky Way as there are stars just like the Solar, and they’re twice as more likely to have rocky planets as stars just like the Solar,” mentioned Thomas Greene, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Ames Analysis Heart and lead writer of the examine. “However they’re additionally very lively — they’re very brilliant after they’re younger, and so they give off flares and X-rays that may wipe out an environment.”
Earlier observations of TRAPPIST-1 b taken by each the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope discovered no proof of a puffy environment around the globe. However these observations additionally couldn’t rule out the likelihood that the planet was cloaked in a dense, thinner one.
One technique to shed extra gentle on whether or not TRAPPIST-1 b has an environment or not is to measure the planet’s temperature. “This planet is tidally locked, with one facet going through the star always and the opposite in everlasting darkness,” mentioned Lagage. “If it has an environment to flow into and redistribute the warmth, the dayside shall be cooler than if there is no such thing as a environment.”
