Could there be a world even more suitable for life than ours, given the assumption that everything we know always starts from the known, in this instance from our planet Earth?
Artistic representation of the potentially habitable planet
Kepler 422-b (left), compared with Earth (right). Credit: Ph03nix1986/Wikimedia
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As strange as it may seem to you, there is a potentially
habitable rocky exoplanet that could support a surface, an atmosphere, and a
hydrosphere capable of supporting life similar to that of our planet.
The Earth is unique in our solar system in that it contains
life, at least that which we are currently aware of. The topic is Kepler-442b,
which is regarded as a highly livable planet.
A super habitable planet is what?
There are millions of planets in our own Milky Way, but
Earth-like planets that are in the habitable zone are significantly less
frequent. Through oxygenic photosynthesis, which plants employ to transform
light and carbon dioxide into oxygen and nutrition, a planet must have a
biosphere similar to Earth in order to sustain life.
As a result, the research focuses on environments similar to
Earth where oxygen-based photosynthesis can take place. However, the most
significant biochemical activity in the Earth's biosphere, oxygenic
photosynthesis, requires liquid water, and we already know that only exoplanets
with the ideal surface temperature—not too hot or too cold—could support
anything like that. It will be far more difficult for photosynthesis to occur if
there is insufficient radiation.
Kepler 442b gets the most PAR, or photosynthetically active
radiation, of all the exoplanets examined in this research, and could
theoretically support the same amount of life as Earth, according to analysis
published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
What makes it more livable than Earth, though?
They note that their aim is to calculate the photon flux,
exergy, and exergetic efficiency of radiation in the suitable wavelength range
for oxygenic photosynthesis as a function of the effective temperature of the
host star and the planet-star separation. the specialists.
According to the researchers, some of the known Kepler and
K2 planets, notably Kepler-442b, have higher H values than Earth, which
indicates that they are more likely to be habitable.
How likely is it that Kepler-442b will have life?
Kepler-442b, which is 2.36 times the mass of Earth and has a
97% likelihood of being in a habitable zone, receives two thirds of the light
that falls on Earth.
It circles a star as Earth orbits the Sun, namely a red
dwarf star that is smaller and colder than our Sun, takes up to 112.3 days to
complete the orbit, and is located around 1,206 light-years from Earth in the
constellation Lyra (home to the famous star Vega).
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