Scientists discovered the Hycean group of planets that are hydrogen-rich but not Earth-like.
REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, LONDON — Researchers have discovered a large exoplanet that could possibly harbor aliens. Hunter alien until recently focused mostly on Earth-like planets.
Earth-like planets are rocky and water-covered worlds. This criterion is the only one we know of that holds life. However, The universe is full of great diversity of planets. Scientists suspect that some of the planets that exist may be habitable even though they are clearly not like Earth.
In the new study, the researchers identified one such alien world class: the “Hycean” planets. This class of planets is up to 2.5 times larger than Earth and has a huge ocean of liquid water under a hydrogen-rich atmosphere.
Planet Hycean seems to be very abundant throughout the Milky Way galaxy. The planet is thought to host microbial life similar to the ‘extrophils’ that thrive in some of the harshest environments on Earth.
“The Hycean planet opens new avenues in our search for life elsewhere,” said lead author Nikku Madhusudhan, from the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge in the UK. Live Science, Tuesday (31/8).
The Hycean world is similar in size to the rocky “super-Earth” and the gassy “mini-Neptune”, the two most common types of exoplanets in the galaxy. But Hyceans are different. According to a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal, the planet has a density between super-Earth and mini-Neptune.
Hyceans are also a lot of variety. Some orbit so close to their stars that they are tidally locked. One side of the scorching day and one side of the forever dark night.
Some orbit very far away, receiving very little stellar radiation. The researchers stress that life could exist in such extreme Hyceans.
“It’s exciting that habitable conditions could exist on a planet so different from Earth,” study co-author Anjali Piette, also of the Cambridge Institute of Astronomy, said.
In addition, Hyceans appears to be a good place to look for potential biosignature gases such as oxygen and methane.
The researchers found that the larger radius and higher temperature acceptable for Hycean planets make these biomarkers easier to detect in Hycean atmospheres compared to rocky exoplanets.
The hunt for Hycean life could begin immediately. Madhusudhan and his colleagues identified a number of Hycean worlds whose atmospheres could be examined by next-generation observatories such as NASA’s $9.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled for launch later this year. The potential target orbits a small, faint red dwarf between 35 and 150 light-years from Earth.
According to Madhusudhan, biosignature detection will change our understanding of life in the universe.
“We need to be open about where we hope to find life and what life forms are like, because nature continues to surprise us in often unimaginable ways,” he said.
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