The Habitability of the Galactic Bulge
arXiv:2008.01419 · doi:10.3390/life10080132
Abstract
We present a new investigation of the habitability of the Milky Way bulge, that expands previous studies on the Galactic Habitable Zone. We discuss existing knowledge on the abundance of planets in the bulge, metallicity and the possible frequency of rocky planets, orbital stability and encounters, and the possibility of planets around the central supermassive black hole. We focus on two aspects that can present substantial differences with respect to the environment in the disk: (i) the ionizing radiation environment, due to the presence of the central black hole and to the highest rate of supernovae explosions and (ii) the efficiency of putative lithopanspermia mechanism for the diffusion of life between stellar systems. We use analytical models of the star density in the bulge to provide estimates of the rate of catastrophic events and of the diffusion timescales for life over interstellar distances.
Published in Life
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Cited by in corpus (5)
- Eta-Earth Revisited II: Deriving a Maximum Number of Earth-like Habitats in the Galactic Disk
- Shaping Galactic Habitability: the impact of stellar migration and gas giants
- Information Gain as a Tool for Assessing Biosignature Missions
- How black hole activity may influence exoplanetary evolution in our Galaxy
- Rethinking Habitability using Biogenic Precursors: Formaldehyde in Millimeter Molecular Clouds of the Inner Galaxy