Scientists recently discovered a new frontier in the race to find life outside our solar system. Dying red giant stars may bring icy planets back from the dead. Once-frozen planets and moons may provide a new breeding ground for life as their stars enter the last, and brightest, phase of their lives. Previous ideas about the search for extra-solar life had excluded these regions.
Image left: A sun-like star grows into its red giant phase, increasing in size and luminosity. Energy in the form of heat can now reach a once-frozen and dead moon. The icy surface quickly melts into liquid water, filling in old craters with warmer seas. The stage is now set for the possible formation of new life. Credit: NASA. Click on the image above for a .mpg movie
An international team of astronomers estimates that the emergence of new life on a planet is possible within the red giant phase. “Our result indicates that searches for life-giving worlds outside our solar system should include planets around old stars,” said Dr. Bruno Lopez of the Observatoire de la Cote d’Azur, Nice, France. Lopez and his colleagues estimate that more than 150 red giant stars are close enough – within 100 light years – for upcoming or proposed missions to search for the signatures of life on distant worlds. A light year is the distance light travels in one year, almost six trillion miles!