60. Life Outside of our Solar System; Is it Possible?

For thousands of years us humans have been looking into the stars, curious about one question. Is Earth the only planet with life? Plenty of theories and science fiction media have tried to replicate what they would be like, if aliens actually were real. No real evidence has been found so far though. Today we are going to look at some planets that could host life on their surface, and see how likely it is that there is.

Proxima Centauri B

Proxima Centauri B is in the Alpha Centauri star system, the closest star system to us. It is 4 light years away and about the same size as Earth, only 0.07 times bigger. Proxima Centauri B is around 0.04 AU to its star or 7.2 million kilometres (AU is distance from the Earth to the sun). fortunately this system's star is a red dwarf, or a M-type star. This means it doesn't generate as much power but is around for longer, around a trillion years. Proxima Centauri B is in the perfect inhabitable zone, where water can appear on its surface. Even though the mass of this planet is 1.4 times Earth's mass, It doesn't affect the surface much. With the gravity almost exactly the same, I would expect to find life here, and it may even be similar to life on Earth, the only different factor would be the day and night cycle, 11 times longer than ours.

Gliese 667 cc

Definitely due for a name change this one, Gliese 667 cc is nearly 6 times further away than the last one, sitting 22 light years away. This one is definitely not as likely as Proxima Centauri B, because it's only just in the perfect inhabitable zone, at 0.125 AU, 18 million kilometres away from the same type of star, M-type. It deserves the classification of Super Earth, because even though it's only 1.77 times the size of Earth, it is nearly 4 times as heavy! For this one it's probably unlikely of life, and if there is, they are not going to look anything like Earth creatures, they'll have to adapt to cold conditions and different gravity.

TRAPPIST-1e

TRAPPIST-1e is a is a small planet 41 light years from Earth. It orbits another small M-type star, TRAPPIST 1. This planet is 0.7 times the size of Earth, and is right near the edge of the habitable zone, at just 0.03 AU from it's star. TRAPPIST-1e is classified as a Terrestrial planet (like Earth and Mars) and has an orbital period of 6 Earth days. Since this one is closer to the sun if there was life form on TRAPPIST-1e you can expect them to be adapted with hotter conditions. This is probably one of the most likely places of life relatively near us.

I hope you enjoyed reading about life on exoplanets, this is a very exciting prospect with all of these exoplanets being discovered every year. If you have any questions I recommend going to the official NASA website. Make sure to subscribe to my Youtube Channel and like the post if you want to see more about life out of our solar system and exoplanets.

Until next time, Give Me Space!