On D-brief Nathaniel Scharping notes a report that some of the planets orbiting Trappist-1 may be water worlds:
A series of papers out today gives us further insights into the TRAPPIST-1 system discovered in 2016.
The seven planets that make up the system orbit a dim red dwarf star much smaller and cooler than our own Sun. The planets’ orbits are much tighter than in our solar system, and they’re all closer to their home star than Mercury is to the Sun. Three of them are thought to be in the “habitable zone” where liquid water could exist.
Credit: Trappist-1 website
What really sharpens my interest in this report is what goes unmentioned here: red dwarfs, which is the classification of Trappist-1, tend to be very long-lived stars. If these planets came into existence at the same time as their star, and the star is well along in its lifetime, well, that’s a lot of time to exist with one of life’s requirements – water – available in what’s considered the system’s habitable zone. I don’t know how old Trappist-1 might be, although I see Wikipedia’s page on Trappist-1 is estimating 3.8 billion years, while the website dedicated to Trappist-1 says 7.6 ± 2.2 Gyr, which is rather longer.
I thought of being an astronomer as a child, until Dad came home one day and said I’d have to earn a Ph.D. or wash test tubes all day. I didn’t have the math for this sort of thing anyways, but I remain fascinated.
