The probability of habitation of the TRAPPIST-1 system was not so high

Two independent teams of researchers have discovered facts that reduce the likelihood that the TRAPPIST-1 system, which has recently become one of the most famous systems of exoplanets, can be inhabited.

The star TRAPPIST-1, the red dwarf, is much duller and less massive than our Sun. It rapidly rotates around its axis and generates high-energy flashes of ultraviolet radiation.

In the first of these scientific works, a team led by Manasvi Lingam from Harvard University, USA, found that the intensity of UV radiation acting on planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system is much greater than the intensity of UV radiation acting on Earth from the side The sun. This will lead to almost complete destruction of atmospheres on these planets, consider Lingam and his colleagues. Thus, the probability of the existence of life in the TRAPPIST-1 system is approximately 100 times lower, compared with the probability of the existence of life on Earth, the authors conclude.

In another study conducted by the team led by Cecilia Garraffo, attention is drawn to the fact that the pressure of the stellar wind emitted by the star TRAPPIST-1 on the surface of the planets from its system is several tens of thousands of times greater than the pressure of the solar wind on the surface of the Earth . According to the authors’ version, such a powerful stream of the stellar wind should easily “penetrate” the magnetosphere of the planets of the TRAPPIST-1 system and deprive the planet of their atmospheres, as well as destroy all living things that could hypothetically exist on the surfaces of the planets.

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