European and American astronomers have discovered that the star GJ 273, one of the closest to Earth, also known as Luyten, has a planetary system with two confirmed planets. One of the planets is in the so-called habitable zone and the other two are in a highly unlikely area to harbor life.
The Luyten Star is a red dwarf star in the constellation of Lesser Dog. According to parallax measurements, it is located at a distance of approximately 12.40 light years (3.80 parsecs), being one of the closest stars to Earth. Is there life on a planet in our neighborhood?
Luyten star may be illuminating a fertile planet
Scientists at the University of Granada (UGR) and other international centers have found that one of the stars in our solar neighborhood has a system of planets as complex as ours. According to these researchers, this star has the ability to harbor life in at least one of them.
The star is called GJ 273, also known as Luyten, in honor of astronomer Willem J. Luyten, who studied his movements. The red dwarf is located 12.23 light years away, which places its planetary system as the closest habitable zone to us, just behind Proxima Centauri (4.24 light years), Ross-128 (in 10.99) and GJ 1061 (at 11.96 light years).
In the orbit of the star Luyten there are two confirmed planets, GJ 273b and GJ 273c. In fact, there are two more that are still in the process of being confirmed later, whose names could be GJ 273d and GJ 273e. The researchers predict that these two candidates would be “minineptunos“, With masses slightly smaller than Neptune, but between 9 and 12 times that of Earth.
The global dynamic analysis carried out by the scientists reveals that this system is highly stable and, therefore, very likely, according to the details published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Exoplanet GJ 273b could harbor life
According to what has been reported, the exoplanet GJ 273c has a similar mass to that of Earth, although the star that concentrates more interest is a little bigger: GJ 273b. It is considered a super-earth and is located near the inner edge of the habitable zone of its host star, a region in which the flow of radiation allows the presence of liquid water.
The warming of the tides makes GJ 273b a highly interesting planet, as this makes it compatible with the development and existence of a biosphere. As a result of the statistics and simulations we perform, it can harbor water, although we do not yet have other direct evidence,
Explains Francisco J. Pozuelos, researcher at the University of Liège (Belgium) and main author.
Furthermore, this planet suffers from warming tides, the same phenomenon for which there are tides on Earth due to gravitational interaction with the Moon and the Sun.
The warming of the tides makes the planet GJ 273b a highly interesting planet, as it is compatible with the development and existence of a biosphere. It is an excellent candidate to look for traces of life in future space missions.
Juan Carlos Suárez, UGR scientist and co-author of the article,
Luyten planetary system has common features with our
According to the study, Luyten's planetary system also has another similarity to our solar system. There is the presence of deposits of smaller bodies. They are asteroids, like those found in the asteroid belt (between Mars and Jupiter) or in the Kuiper belt (in addition to Neptune), whose impact on the presence of water or on the production of organic products may be relevant.
Scientists predict these deposits around Luyten, which, if confirmed, could play an important role in the emergence and maintenance of life in GJ 273b.
Therefore, GJ 273b is a super-earth exoplanet that orbits a type M star. Its mass is 2.89 Earths, it takes 18.6 days to complete one orbit of its star, and is 0.091101 AU from its star. Despite being discovered in 2017, it still needs a lot of research. Who knows, we have life in the galactic backyard.