Our Alien-Hunting Efforts Must Incorporate This New Measure to Find Life, Study Argues | Weather.com - The Weather Channel

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(ESO/M. Kornmesser)

Finding life beyond Earth is the ultimate cosmic quest, but narrowing down the search among countless planets is no easy feat. Beyond the holy trinity of water, warmth, and food, scientists are now adding a surprising element to the recipe for life: entropy.

Entropy, in simple terms, is the measure of disorder or randomness in a system. While a chaotic system has high entropy, a living organism, with its intricate structure and constant energy flow, strives for low entropy to maintain its stability. This seemingly paradoxical dance is the key to understanding why some planets might be better suited for complex life than others.

The latest study proposes that a planet's "planetary entropy production" (PEP) can be a powerful indicator of its habitability. Essentially, the more a planet's biosphere can generate and dissipate energy, the higher its PEP and the greater its potential for life. Think of it as the engine driving the evolution and complexity of living organisms.

The researcher believes that the best part of this concept is that it doesn't discriminate based on the chemistry of life. Whether the life-form may be based on carbon, like here on Earth, silicon, or something entirely alien, the key lies in the dynamic processes that fuel life's growth and complexity. Planets with high PEP values, like Earth in the "sweet spot" of our Sun's habitable zone, become prime candidates for hosting diverse and intricate biospheres.

Classic planet hunting vs entropy-hunting

Classic life-hunting approaches consider finding the "circumstellar habitable zone" (CHZ), a region of space around a star where the conditions are appropriate for water to exist in the liquid state; what scientists consider essential for life. If the planet is too close within the CHZ, stellar heating will eventually evaporate whatever water it originally had, while bodies farther away might be too cool to be hospitable. Then comes the challenges of having a biosphere composition accommodating enough to actually support life.

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Instead of searching for such Goldilocks zones, PEP helps prioritise planets within the CHZ with the most potential for complex life. This method even accounts for their position relative to their star's temperature and radiation and doesn't require assumptions about the planet's atmosphere or the specific chemistry of its lifeforms.

This is especially relevant when considering exoplanets around different types of stars. The PEP method finds that planets orbiting hotter and larger F and G stars, for example, tend to have a larger sphere of habitability compared to those around cooler and lower-mass M and K stars. This provides valuable insights for future telescope missions, allowing them to focus their search on the most promising candidates for life.

Of course, PEP is just one piece of the puzzle. Further research is needed to refine our understanding of how it interacts with other factors that dictate life such as planetary size or its radiation-resisting magnetosphere. But by adding entropy to the mix, we can paint a more nuanced picture of planetary habitability and refine our search for life beyond our own pale blue dot.

The findings of this study have been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and can be accessed here.

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2023-12-15 10:09:57Z
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