Here's How a Huge Exoplanet Very Close to Earth Could Hide Strange Forms of Life

By Rafi Letzter, Staff Writer | January 18, 2019 08:08am ET

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There's a chance that the dimly lit super-Earth called Barnard b, which orbits Barnard's star, could support life. Here, an artist's impression of the planet's frozen surface.
Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

There's a rocky planet out there that's very big and cold. Its sun, a red dwarf named "Barnard's star" looks much larger in its sky than Earth's. It bathes the planet in X-rays and ultraviolet light, likely enough radiation to strip away any atmosphere. But Barnard's star is also much dimmer than Earth's host star, so the planet's surface is probably a frozen wasteland — the sort of place that likely wouldn't have any liquid water, and that most scientists wouldn't expect to support life.

But a new analysis suggests that the planet, named Barnard B, might give rise to life after all.

In a presentation on Jan. 10 at the 233rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, Washington, a pair of Villanova astronomers argued that if Barnard B had enough geothermal activity, it might have pockets of heat on its surface where life might survive.

Barnard B is still too small and far away for our current generation of telescopes to image directly. Instead, scientists know it's there and they know its general characteristics — a rocky planet more than three times the mass of Earth about as close to its star as Mercury is to ours — from studying the way it makes light coming from Barnard's star wiggle. [Gallery: Unique Life at Antarctic Deep-Sea Vents]

More:
https://www.livescience.com/64537-exoplanet-barnard-ice-life.html