Scientists call the Earth-like Kepler-442b based on adequate sunlight.
REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA – The Milky Way galaxy could have 300 million planets, the newspaper said last year. However, a recent study released Monthly Announcements of the Royal Astronomical Society Lead to different results.
In the study, planets with Earth-like conditions were rarer than previously thought. This recent analysis focuses on the process of photosynthesis. So far 4,422 exoplanets have been discovered by astronomers. However, only a small area is considered habitable.
Photosynthesis is when plants use sunlight, water and carbon dioxide to produce oxygen and energy. This is considered important for exoplanets because it creates oxygen-dependent atmospheres.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWSD), launched later this year, will allow exoplanets to study the atmosphere as they pass by their stars. Light coming through the atmosphere will reveal its gaseous content.
However, photosynthesis requires water. Only exoplanets with the right temperature, i.e. not too hot or too cold, can hold water on their surface. Therefore, the number of exoplanets such as the Earth in the Goldilocks Zone or habitable zone is not high.
In fact, in many rocks and habitable exoplanets, there are no theoretical conditions for sustaining an Earth-like biosphere for energy from photosynthesis.
Research into the amount of solar radiation received by each exoplanet has revealed that a planet that receives almost enough sunlight to support a large biosphere can be detected by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Kepler-442b.
This planet is known as a rocky planet with twice the mass of Earth. Kepler-442b is a hot orange dwarf orbiting the constellation Lyra 1,120 light-years away. Its existence was announced in 2015 after the discovery of the Kepler space telescope while crossing its host star. However, the telescope stopped working in 2018.
Also known as KOI-4742.01, Exoplanet Earth is about half the distance from the Sun and its star. It takes 112 days to orbit Kepler-442. Stars with half the temperature of the Sun cannot sustain an Earth-like biosphere because they do not provide enough energy in the right wavelength range.
Not that there is no photosynthesis, but there will not be enough plant life on the planet to sustain an Earth-like biosphere.
Reported Forbes, Friday (25/6), This result is a blow to the search for galaxy life because 70 percent of the stars in the Milky Way are pale red dwarfs. None of this indicates that they provide enough sunlight for their planet to photosynthesize.
The worst thing is that stars that are hotter and brighter than the Sun, in theory, provide more photosynthetic energy. Unfortunately these stars did not last long for complex life.
“Because red dwarfs are the most common type of star in our galaxy, these results may be far rarer than Earth-like conditions on other planets,” said Giovanni Cowan, a leading author at the University of Naples.
“This study places strong limits on the parameter space for complex life. So unfortunately the” pleasant space “that accommodates an Earth-like biosphere is not so wide,” he added.