Predicted diversity in water content of terrestrial exoplanets orbiting M dwarfs
arXiv:2209.14563 · doi:10.1038/s41550-022-01781-1
Abstract
Exoplanet surveys around M dwarfs have detected a growing number of exoplanets with Earth-like insolation. It is expected that some of those planets are rocky planets with the potential for temperate climates favourable to surface liquid water. However, various models predict that terrestrial planets orbiting in the classical habitable zone around M dwarfs have no water or too much water, suggesting that habitable planets around M dwarfs might be rare. Here we present the results of an updated planetary population synthesis model, which includes the effects of water enrichment in the primordial atmosphere, caused by the oxidation of atmospheric hydrogen by rocky materials from incoming planetesimals and from the magma ocean. We find that this water production in the primordial atmosphere is found to significantly impact the occurrence of terrestrial rocky aqua planets, yielding ones with diverse water content. We estimate that 5-10% of the planets with a size orbiting early-to-mid M dwarfs have appropriate amounts of seawater for habitability. Such an occurrence rate would be high enough to detect potentially habitable planets by ongoing and near-future M-dwarf planet survey missions.
22 pages, 4 figures. Published in Nature Astronomy (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-022-01781-1)
References in corpus (22)
- The James Webb Space Telescope
- Habitable Zones Around Main-Sequence Stars: Dependence on Planetary Mass
- Growth Model Interpretation of Planet Size Distribution
- Make Super-Earths, Not Jupiters: Accreting Nebular Gas onto Solid Cores at 0.1 AU and Beyond
- Chemical enrichment of giant planets and discs due to pebble drift
- Constraints on the mass of a habitable planet with water of nebular origin
- Evolution of Protoplanetary Discs with Magnetically Driven Disc Winds
- Post-Oligarchic Evolution of Protoplanetary Embryos and the Stability of Planetary Systems
- Formation of a disc gap induced by a planet: Effect of the deviation from Keplerian disc rotation
- Planet formation with envelope enrichment: new insights on planetary diversity
- Coorbital thermal torques on low-mass protoplanets
- Improved torque formula for low and intermediate mass planetary migration
- Saturated torque formula for planetary migration in viscous disks with thermal diffusion: recipe for protoplanet population synthesis
- CSI 2264: Investigating rotation and its connection with disk accretion in the young open cluster NGC 2264
- A Systematic Study of the Final Masses of Gas Giant Planets
- Infall of planetesimals onto growing giant planets: onset of runaway gas accretion and metallicity of their gas envelopes
- Pebbles versus planetesimals: the outcomes of population synthesis models
- Predicting the Exoplanet Yield of the TESS Prime and Extended Missions Through Years 1-7
- Magnetically Induced Disk Winds and Transport in the HL Tau Disk
- Formation of aqua planets with water of nebular origin: Effects of water enrichment on the structure and mass of captured atmospheres of terrestrial planets
- Keeping M-Earths Habitable in the Face of Atmospheric Loss by Sequestering Water in the Mantle
- Runaway climate cooling of ocean planets in the habitable zone: a consequence of seafloor weathering enhanced by melting of high-pressure ice
Cited by in corpus (29)
- Distinguishing oceans of water from magma on mini-Neptune K2-18b
- Bioverse: A Comprehensive Assessment of the Capabilities of Extremely Large Telescopes to Probe Earth-like O Levels in Nearby Transiting Habitable Zone Exoplanets
- The erosion of large primary atmospheres typically leaves behind substantial secondary atmospheres on temperate rocky planets
- Super-Earths and Earth-like Exoplanets
- The distribution of volatile elements during rocky planet formation
- A roadmap for the atmospheric characterization of terrestrial exoplanets with JWST
- Role of magma oceans in controlling carbon and oxygen of sub-Neptune atmospheres
- Bioverse: The Habitable Zone Inner Edge Discontinuity as an Imprint of Runaway Greenhouse Climates on Exoplanet Demographics
- Mantle mineralogy limits to rocky planet water inventories
- Heating and ionization by non-thermal electrons in the upper atmospheres of water-rich exoplanets
- Eta-Earth Revisited II: Deriving a Maximum Number of Earth-like Habitats in the Galactic Disk
- Interior-atmosphere modelling to assess the observability of rocky planets with JWST
- Constraining exoplanet interiors using observations of their atmospheres
- EDEN Survey: Small Transiting Planet Detection Limits and Constraints on the Occurrence Rates for Late M Dwarfs within 15 pc
- Building Wet Planets through High-Pressure Magma-Hydrogen Reactions
- A Bayesian Analysis of Technological Intelligence in Land and Oceans
- An Earth-sized Planet around an M5 Dwarf Star at 22 pc
- Water versus land on temperate rocky planets
- Beyond Mediocrity: How Common is Life?
- Heating, Excitation, Dissociation, and Ionization of Molecules by High-Energy Photons in Planetary Atmospheres
- Coupled Thermal-Chemical Evolution Models of Sub-Neptunes Reveal Atmospheric Signatures of Their Formation Location
- Born Dry or Born Wet? A Palette of Water Growth Histories in TRAPPIST-1 Analogs and Compact Planetary Systems
- Tidally Heated Sub-Neptunes, Refined Planetary Compositions, and Confirmation of a Third Planet in the TOI-1266 System
- What if we find nothing? Bayesian analysis of the statistical information of null results in future exoplanet habitability and biosignature surveys
- The atmospheres of rocky exoplanets III. Using atmospheric spectra to constrain surface rock composition
- Potential Surface Ice Distribution on Close-in Terrestrial Exoplanets around M dwarfs
- An Evolving Cosmic Shoreline and Sandbar Bounding the Rocky Airless Valley
- Inversion of Hydrogen-rich Atmosphere and Water Content for GJ 486b
- Rapid and Predictive Planet Population Synthesis Model (RAPPS) I. Upgraded model and resulting synthetic populations