1y ago

TIL about the TRAPPIST-1 Star System

en.wikipedia.org

TRAPPIST-1 - Wikipedia

(it's not a solar system because Sol is our star, specifically; we're the only Solar system)

TRAPPIST-1 is a cool red dwarf star[c] with seven known exoplanets.

Up to four of the planets – designated d, e, f and g – orbit at distances where temperatures are suitable for the existence of liquid water, and are thus potentially hospitable to life.

The red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 has an estimated lifespan of pretty much the entire lifespan of the universe. If any of those planets are habitable, and humanity goes there, we could live there until the end of the whole universe, no worrying about our sun going out in about 5 billion years. It could be our forever home.

The planets in the TRAPPIST system are extremely close to each other, so the night sky on any of them would be awe-inspiring, with multiple bodies bigger than our moon rising and setting every night.

17 comments

They are likely tidally locked to TRAPPIST-1, such that one side of each planet always faces the star, leading to permanent day on one side and permanent night on the other.
Sounds less great then and I think it also says they maybe don't have an atmosphere. I wonder if we can find out more about these planets in our lifetimes.
- I think tidally locked planets are fascinating. If they have water, they could be eyeball planets. There's a habitable ring in the twilight zone, and depending on how hot the day side is parts of that might be habitable too.
  But we'll likely run into the same issue re the atmosphere as we have with Mars: no magnetosphere to prevent any atmosphere from getting stripped away. It's starting to look like a self-protecting atmosphere like Earth has is quite rare in rocky planets.
  If I could summon a genie and learn any one bit of knowledge, it'd be how to restart Mars's dynamo. Once we have that, terraforming is a solved problem. Not easy, but doable.
  
  how to restart Mars’s dynamo
  Wasn't there a kurzgesagt video that said something about being able to protect an atmosphere on Mars artificially via satellites and magnetism or something? I swear there was. So maybe we don't even need to restart Mars's dynamo (which let's be real, would probably be impossible).
It could be our forever home.
If by “forever” you mean “until we manage to fuck up the ecosystem, making it hostile to humans...
- In this hypothetical future we've learned how to live with an equilibrium. Also we've fired all the terminally pessimistic doomers into the Sun. Not for any scientific reason, just because it was the right thing to do.
  
  I just stumbled across this but I love the fact that saying the phrase, "fired all the terminally pessimistic doomers into the sun" was agitating enough to get two follow up responses deleted.
Isn't the name of the sun Helios? I thought Sol was more like a title or description.. like "mom" or "dad", but for planets.
- Helios is another one of the Sun's names. It's the more poetic version. But Sol is a proper name, exclusive to our sun.
  
  It's probably my Swedish upbringing then.
  In Swedish, "sun" translates directly to "sol". And we have different forms, like "solen" -> "the sun", "solar" -> "suns", "solarna" -> "the suns" etc.
  But we don't have different forms for proper names.
That's one of the starting systems in Stellaris!
Bet there's some stellar ales around there
It could be our forever home.
If that system really is that old, the chances that life already flourishes there might be higher even than for our own world (statistically spoken), despite the fact that the planets might be tidally locked to their star!?
- Possible. It's looking like the planets may not have an atmosphere, which means there could be ocean life but vast surface-covering life like Earth is unlikely.

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