A new study says that Super-Earths cannot form the ‘right kind’ of moon necessary to make a planet habitable. Exoplanet study has been accelerating at the rate of technology development. New telescopes like James Webb Space, Cheops and Plato increase the capacity to look beyond this solar system.
As science exhausted the possibility of finding complex life forms and habitable planets in humankind’s solar system, they have ventured beyond. Scientists have already discovered and identified thousands of exoplanets in distances that range from a couple hundred to several billions of light-years from this solar system. Webb is just weeks from starting its exoplanet scientific assignments.
Scientists from the University of Rochester have been running complex simulations and crashing planets against each other to determine what type of planet can form a particular kind of moon. They say their models reveal that any rocky planet six times the size of Earth would not form the moon necessary to be habitable. However, the team also says that in the search for habitable worlds, they are focusing where they shouldn’t.
Finding Life By Finding The Right Sized Moon
The size of moons matters. On this planet, the moon controls oceans tides and affects all biological cycles and life as people know it. If the moon were smaller, none of this would be the same. The climate and the Earth’s spin axis would be destabilized. Earth’s moon is massive, more than 1/4 the size of Earth. It is the largest moon compared in a ratio relationship to its planet in this solar system, and this is no coincidence considering that life only flourishes here.
Scientists have discovered many exoplanets but no exomoons orbiting any of these planets. The reason is that moons are harder to spot and because the focus has been on Super-Earth exoplanets. Earth’s moon formed when a Mars-sized world crashed into Earth, strangely a widespread phenomenon in the early formation of solar systems. 4.5 billion years ago, the crash created a disk around Earth that eventually formed the moon.
The team ran several simulations on different sizes of planets and how different collisions would form moons. They came to a shocking conclusion. Super-Earths don’t form large moons when rocky planets are six or more times larger than Earth. The impact is too strong, and the energy creates completely vaporized disks. The disk cools downs forming liquid moonlets (building blocks of a moon). But gravity pulls them back down to the massive planet. On the other hand, when smaller planets are impacted, the disk is only partially vaporized, and moonlets can form a moon of the ‘right’ size. Scientists say that new exoplanet studies, including Webb’s, need to stop focusing on Super-Earths and start looking at smaller planets if they are serious about finding life beyond this solar system.
