General Relativity Can Prevent a Runaway Greenhouse on Potentially Habitable Planets Orbiting White Dwarfs
arXiv:2509.26421 · doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ae07c6
Abstract
Planets orbiting in the habitable zones of white dwarfs have recently been proposed as promising targets for biosignature searches. However, since the white dwarf habitable zone resides at 0.01 - 0.1 AU, planets residing there are subject to tidal heating if they have any orbital eccentricity. Previous work (Barnes & Heller 2013) identified nearby planetary companions as potential roadblocks to habitability of planets around white dwarfs, as such companions could induce secular oscillations in eccentricity for the potentially habitable planet, which could in turn heat a surface ocean and induce a runaway greenhouse for even very low values () of the eccentricity of the potentially habitable planet. In this work, we examine the potential for general relativistic orbital precession to protect habitable planets orbiting white dwarfs from such a runaway greenhouse, and demonstrate that for some system architectures, general relativity can be protective for planetary habitability.
References in corpus (40)
- REBOUND: An open-source multi-purpose N-body code for collisional dynamics
- A disintegrating minor planet transiting a white dwarf
- Are There Unstable Planetary Systems Around White Dwarfs?
- The California-Kepler Survey V. Peas in a Pod: Planets in a Kepler Multi-planet System are Similar in Size and Regularly Spaced
- Orbital perturbations on transiting planets: A possible method to measure stellar quadrupoles and to detect Earth-mass planets
- REBOUNDx: A Library for Adding Conservative and Dissipative Forces to Otherwise Symplectic N-body Integrations
- Dissipative Divergence of Resonant Orbits
- A Giant Planet Candidate Transiting a White Dwarf
- Simulations of two-planet systems through all phases of stellar evolution: implications for the instability boundary and white dwarf pollution
- The Planet Nine Hypothesis
- Tidal heating of Earth-like exoplanets around M stars: Thermal, magnetic, and orbital evolutions
- Tidal Limits to Planetary Habitability
- Transit surveys for Earths in the habitable zones of white dwarfs
- A White Dwarf with Transiting Circumstellar Material Far Outside the Roche Limit
- Habitable Planets Around White and Brown Dwarfs: The Perils of a Cooling Primary
- Interior Structures and Tidal Heating in the TRAPPIST-1 Planets
- Planet formation from the ejecta of common envelopes
- Detecting bio-markers in habitable-zone earths transiting white dwarfs
- The White Dwarf Opportunity: Robust Detections of Molecules in Earth-like Exoplanet Atmospheres with the James Webb Space Telescope
- Exoplanet recycling in massive white-dwarf debris discs
- Moderately Eccentric Warm Jupiters from Secular Interactions with Exterior Companions
- Evolution of Planetary Systems with Time Dependent Stellar Mass Loss
- The habitability and detection of Earth-like planets orbiting cool white dwarfs
- The lifetimes of planetary debris discs around white dwarfs
- Tidal circularization of gaseous planets orbiting white dwarfs
- Relativistic Effects in Extrasolar Planetary Systems
- A New Method for Finding Nearby White Dwarf Exoplanets and Detecting Biosignatures
- Mutual Inclination Excitation by Stellar Oblateness
- UV Surface Environments and Atmospheres of Earth-like Planets Orbiting White Dwarfs
- Detecting the General Relativistic Orbital Precession of the Exoplanet HD 80606b
- The Influence of Tidal Heating on the Habitability of Planets Orbiting White Dwarfs
- celmech: A Python package for celestial mechanics
- A CHEOPS White Dwarf Transit Search
- Relativistic Dynamical Stability Criterion of Multi-Planet Systems with a Distant Companion
- Post-Newtonian effects on some characteristic timescales of transiting exoplanets
- Hiding Planets Near and Far: The Parameter Space of Hidden Companions for Known Planetary Systems
- The Fate of Oceans on First-Generation Planets Orbiting White Dwarfs
- Potential for life to exist and be detected on Earth-like planets orbiting white dwarfs
- Increased Surface Temperatures of Habitable White Dwarf Worlds Relative to Main-Sequence Exoplanets
- Second-generation planet formation after tidal disruption from common envelope evolution