Giant gas balls – dubbed “Hot Jupiters” – careening though planetary systems deep in space may be creating planets capable of sustaining life, a new study says.
About a third of the 160 planetary systems discovered in deep space could have Earthlike planets, said Sean Raymond, a University of Colorado researcher and co-author of the study in today’s issue of the journal Science.
Raymond’s study – done in collaboration with researchers at the University of Pennsylvania – is part of a growing body of research into the question of life in outer space.
“The science we see today was seen as fringe 20 or 30 years ago,” said Bruce Jakosky, director of CU’s Center for Astrobiology, which is devoted to studying life in the universe.
Upcoming National Aeronautics and Space Administration projects, such as the Kepler Mission and Terrestrial Planet Finder, are designed to search for life on other planets, Jakosky said.
Among other search ideas is a proposal by CU astrophysicist Webster Cash to build a star shield that would fly ahead of space telescopes blocking out light and allowing astronomers to examine distant planets for signs of life.
“It’s like stamp collecting,” Cash said. “If we can find enough water planets and look at enough of them, we can sort them and determine which ones have life.”
Raymond’s research – based on computer simulations of 200 million years of planet evolution – could guide planet hunters in the search for habitable worlds.
As a “Hot Jupiter” moves toward its system’s parent star, it disrupts the space environment and may create, in its wake, Earthlike planets with oceans.
“These gas giants cause quite a ruckus,” Raymond said. “We now think that there is a new class of ocean-covered and possibly habitable planets in solar systems unlike our own.”
Any life also would be unlike that on Earth, Raymond said.
“There are a lot of evolutionary steps in between the formation of such planets in other systems and the presence of life forms looking back at us,” he said.
Cash’s star shield has received a $475,000 NASA design grant.
The design team, including Boulder-based Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp., is seeking another $400 million from NASA to launch a star shade to fly in front of the James Webb Space Telescope scheduled to launch in 2013.
The dark plastic, daisy- shaped disc, 50 yards across, would fly 15,000 miles in front of the space telescope, enabling researchers to see oceans, continents, polar caps and cloud banks – even oxygen and water – on planets as small as Earth’s moon.
“Formation flying of two spacecraft dancing in concert in space is kind of Buck Rogers in concept,” Cash said. “But it’s well within our technical playbook.”
Staff writer Dave Curtin can be reached at 303-954-1276 or dcurtin@denverpost.com.
