TRAPPIST 1 Habitable Zone (IMAGE)

Southwest Research Institute

TRAPPIST 1 Habitable Zone

Caption

An SwRI-led study suggests that host-star age and radionuclide abundance will help determine both an exoplanet’s history and its current likelihood of being temperate today. For example, the red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 is home to the largest group of roughly Earth-sized planets ever found in a single stellar system with seven rocky siblings including four in the habitable zone. But at around 8 billion years old, these worlds are roughly 2 billion years older than the most optimistic degassing lifetime predicted by this study and unlikely to support a temperate climate today.

Credit

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Usage Restrictions

No restrictions.

License

Public Domain

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