New Model Developed to Spot Habitable Zones Around Stars

A team of scientists from Penn State have redefined the concept of habitable zones around a star. The habitable zone or the goldilocks zone is of a not-too-close, not-too-far distance from the parent star, but apt to sustain life.

Researchers on a hunt for planets in the galaxy always check whether the planets fall in the known habitable zone. This new model that incorporates latest data makes it easier for the scientists to determine whether the discovered planets fall in the habitable zone that could hold water and thus sustain life.

James Kasting, a professor at the Penn State University who studies planetary atmospheres, came up with a definition for habitable zone and till date, the same concept follows. This new work is built on Kasting's model in order to offer more precise calculation of the habitable zones that can be discovered around the star.

They noticed that their estimate goes against the previous findings. In fact, they could find the habitable zones farther away from stars that what was previously thought.

"This has implications for finding other planets with life on them," postdoctoral researcher Ravi Kumar Kopparapu, a lead investigator of the study, said in a press statement.

The team worked on the recent updates to the HITRAN (high-resolution transmission molecular absorption) and HITEMP (high-temperature spectroscopic absorption parameters) databases. They provided more accurate information on water and carbon dioxide than what was available earlier. This made it easy for the researchers to build new estimates from the Kastings model.

With this model the researchers can check whether the planets that NASA's Kepler mission discovers fall within the habitable zone. Nearly 2,000 potential systems have been found by the Kepler mission that can be investigated.

The precision spectrograph will help scientists locate Earth-sized planets in the Milky Way, which holds water. According to the scientists, this model can be used in future for research that is conducted with the Terrestrial Planet Finder telescope.

The study details will be published in the Astrophysical Journal.