From Dr. Becky.
Head to https://squarespace.com/drbecky to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code DRBECKY – AD | One of the biggest hopes for the James Webb Space Telescope, JWST was that it could tell us whether the TRAPPIST-1 planets were habitable to life. TRAPPIST-1 is a system of 7 exoplanets orbiting around a red dwarf star, much smaller and cooler than the Sun. All 7 planets are around the same mass and size as Earth, Venus and Mars in the Solar System, so they’re thought to be rocky, but they orbit much closer in to their star, well within the distance of Mercury to the Sun. But because their star is so much cooler, the amount of light they receive still puts a few of those planets in that Goldilocks zone where wouldn’t be too hot or too cold for life to exist. Add on top of that that the star is 7.6 billion years old, which is about 3 billion years older than the solar system, so there should have been enough time for life to evolve on these planets, only *if* they have atmospheres. And that is a big IF, and something that we want JWST to answer. It’s just that there’s been a lot of doubt recently about whether it’s even worth looking for signs of life on planets around red dwarfs because models have suggested that if they’re so close to their star they could get bombarded with radiation, stripping away any atmosphere that’s there. But this month this new paper by Krissansen-Totton and collaborators was published which says that not all hope is lost, and that TRAPPIST-1e in the habitable zone, according to their models should still have an atmosphere and be habitable…
00:00 – Introduction
02:55 – AD Squarespace
04:22 – What’s been found about TRAPPIST-1 so far with HST and JWST
08:54 – What we think is happening with planet formation around red dwarf stars
13:27 – What this new model from Krissansen-Totton and collaborators is showing for the planets TRAPPIST-1b and 1e
18:31 – When will we finally get JWST results for TRAPPIST-1e?
21:33 – Bloopers
JWST observing schedules – https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science-execution/observing-schedules
JWST public data archive – https://mast.stsci.edu/search/ui/#/jwst
Krissansen-Totton et al. (2024; new model for TRAPPIST-1b&e atmopsheres) – https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-52642-6
Gillon et al. (2017; confirmation of 7 planet system around TRAPPIST-1) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.01424
deWit et al. (2016; HST look at TRAPPIST-1b&c) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.01103
deWit et al. (2018; HST look at TRAPPIST-1d,e,f,&g) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.02250
Zieba et al. (2023; TRAPPIST-1c MIRI data release) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2306.10150.pdf
Greene et al. (2023; TRAPPIST-1b MIRI data release) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.14849.pdf
Bitsch et al. (2024; super-Earth or sub-Neptune formation) – https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2021/05/aa40793-21/aa40793-21.html
Gaudi et al. (2021; demographics of discovered exoplanets) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.04703
My previous video on TRAPPIST-1b & c observed with JWST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVO02Abfs84
My previous video on the search for biosignatures with JWST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1soYYbHiCg
My previous video on the biosignature claim on the planet K2-18b with JWST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F360SGAlI8Y
Another previous video on the biosignature claim on the planet K2-18b: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0lGz73rluo
Video filmed on a Sony ⍺7 IV
Video edited by Martino Gasparrini: https://www.fiverr.com/mgs_editing
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👩🏽💻 I’m Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford (Christ Church). I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don’t know. If you’ve ever wondered about something in space and couldn’t find an answer online – you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars.
