SETI Talks: Could Rogue Planets Harbor Life?

Life elsewhere in our galaxy may come in many exotic forms, and scientists have speculated about the existence of life on alien worlds, like rogue planets. Rogue planets are planets that are not orbiting any stars.

It’s awe-inspiring that astronomers have discovered more than 4,000 confirmed exoplanets to date (and thousands of more exoplanet candidates). However, most detection techniques rely on the existence of a host star. To detect rogue planets, astronomers use gravitational microlensing, which involves watching foreground objects pass in front of distant background stars. The chances of such an event are slim, but modern astronomers observe tens of millions of stars every 15 minutes, which will increase to 100 million with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, to detect them. Based on planets that have already been found, our Milky Way could have 50 billion wandering planets, a staggering number that may imply that if life exists on those worlds, our galaxy is full of it.

If a planet is ripped from the warm environment of its star and drifts in the frigid depths of space, it could still hold on to a liquid ocean — and maybe life — beneath an icy crust. Could submarine aliens on such a planet have a chance at survival? And for how long?

We invited two astronomers to discuss the detection and characterization of rogue planets and their potential to harbor life. Dorian Abbot, an associate professor at the University of Chicago, co-authored a proposal for a habitable planet in interstellar space in 2011. And Matthew Penny, an assistant professor at Louisiana State University, leads the MISHAPS transit survey and numerous other microlensing focused programs.

Franck Marchis, a senior planetary astronomer at the SETI Institute, will host this conversation about the future of rogue planet detection and their potential to harbor life in many sorts of weird situations that we haven’t thought of before.

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