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Understanding planetary habitability is partly an extrapolation of the conditions on Earth, as this is the only planet known to support life. Planetary habitability is the measure of a planet's or a natural satellite's potential to develop and maintain an environment hospitable to life. [1]
The following list includes some of the potentially habitable exoplanets discovered so far. It is mostly based on estimates of habitability by the Habitable Worlds Catalog (HWC), and data from the NASA Exoplanet Archive. The HWC is maintained by the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo. [1]
Planetary habitability in the Solar System is the study that searches the possible existence of past or present extraterrestrial life in those celestial bodies. As exoplanets are too far away and can only be studied by indirect means, the celestial bodies in the Solar System allow for a much more detailed study: direct telescope observation, space probes, rovers and even human spaceflight.
Beyond that, tidal heating might play a role for a moon's habitability. In 2012, scientists introduced a concept to define the habitable orbits of moons; [50] they define an inner border of an habitable moon around a certain planet and call it the circumplanetary "habitable edge". Moons closer to their planet than the habitable edge are ...
Planets in the habitable zones of stars with low metallicity are more habitable for complex life on land than high metallicity stars because the stellar spectrum of high metallicity stars is less likely to cause the formation of ozone thus enabling more ultraviolet rays to reach the planet's surface. [190] [191] Habitable zones have usually ...
A planet's atmospheric conditions influence its ability to retain heat so that the location of the habitable zone is also specific to each type of planet: desert planets (also known as dry planets), with very little water, will have less water vapor in the atmosphere than Earth and so have a reduced greenhouse effect, meaning that a desert ...
A hycean planet is a hypothetical type of planet with liquid water oceans under a hydrogen atmosphere. [1] The presence of extraterrestrial liquid water makes hycean planets regarded as promising candidates for planetary habitability. [2] [3] [4] They are usually considered to be larger and more massive than Earth. [5]
Proxima Centauri b is the closest exoplanet to Earth, [19] at a distance of about 4.2 ly (1.3 parsecs). [4] It orbits Proxima Centauri every 11.186 Earth days at a distance of about 0.049 AU, [1] over 20 times closer to Proxima Centauri than Earth is to the Sun. [20] As of 2021, it is unclear whether it has an eccentricity [e] [23] but Proxima Centauri b is unlikely to have any obliquity. [24]