“One of the Best Habitable Zone Planets” Likely Has an Atmosphere, Says New Exoplanet Research (thedebrief.org)

submitted 1 month ago by artifex@piefed.social to c/space@beehaw.org

3 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Your favorite exosolar system and mine -- TRAPPIST-1 -- has long been known to have a few plants in its Goldilocks zone where water can exist in liquid form. New analysis of data from the JWST's scan of planet TRAPPIST-1e now shows that in addition to surface water (in the form of liquid water or ice), it also has some form of atmosphere, increasing the chances that it could possibly harbor life.

top 3 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[-] StrongHorseWeakNeigh@piefed.social 3 points 1 month ago

Is there any way for us to be able to tell if it has an extant of strong magnetosphere? Or is being able to tell that still outside of our reach

[-] artifex@piefed.social 4 points 1 month ago

I don’t know if that is detectable, but having an atmosphere is a good sign since it means either there is a protective magnetosphere or the atmosphere is replenished as fast/faster than it is stripped away by solar wind.

[-] communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 2 points 1 month ago

Given its size, age, and the fact that it has an atmosphere at all, I don't think it's likely at all not to have a magnetosphere but I'm no expert

this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2025

20 points (100.0% liked)

Space

8264 readers

1 users here now

News and findings about our cosmos.

Subcommunity of Science

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

alyaza@beehaw.org

Gaywallet@beehaw.org

wintrparkgrl@beehaw.org

remington@beehaw.org