Real-life ‘Project Hail Mary’ moment: 45 planets that may support alien life discovered

Astronomers in a recent breakthrough have identified 45 new rocky exoplanets that could harbour and support alien life.

The researchers also mentioned a more "restrictive" list of 24 planets that meet even tighter habitability assumptions.

Till now around 6,000 exoplanets have been discovered, but many of them are unable to host life due to unsuitable circumstances and temperature conditions.

These newly identified planets are located in the habitable zone, this is the orbital region around a star where temperatures are quite suitable for harbouring life of any kind.

The examples of these habitable exoplanets include TRAPPIST-1, TOI-715 b, LHS 1140 b, Kepler 186f, and Proxima Centauri b.

"As Project Hail Mary so beautifully illustrates, life might be much more versatile than we currently imagine, so figuring out which of the 6,000 known exoplanets would be most likely to host extraterrestrials such as Astrophage and Taumoeba -- or Rocky -- could prove critical, and not just to Ryan Gosling," Professor Kaltenegger who led the research said.

“Our paper reveals where you should travel to find life if we ever built a 'Hail Mary' spacecraft,” he added.

The most intriguing exoplanets

Among all the potential candidates, some planets are more intriguing when it comes to supporting alien life. The most exciting one on the list is in the Trappist-1 system. The system 40 light-years away contains four promising planets (d, e, f, and g).

TOI-715 b and LHS 1140 b have emerged as the promising candidates for near-term study due to their size and orientation.

These planets are capable of receiving the levels of starlight equivalent to sunlight the Earth receives. The examples include: RAPPIST-1 e, TOI-715 b, Kepler-1652 b, Kepler-442 b, and Kepler-1544 b, along with planets such as Proxima Centauri b, GJ 1061 d, GJ 1002 b, and Wolf 1069 b.

The researchers are also looking at eccentric planets with oval-shaped orbits and those on the extreme inner or outer edges of the habitable zone to see how much heat or cold life can actually endure.

According to co-author Abigail Bohl, of Cornell University, "We can use our Solar System as a reference to search for exoplanets that receive stellar energy between what Venus and Mars get.”

"Observing these planets can help us understand when habitability is lost, how much energy is too much, and which planets remain habitable -- or maybe never were,” Bohl added.

By using data from Gaia mission and Nasa’s Exoplanet Archive, the study titled Probing the limits of habitability: a catalogue of rocky exoplanets in the habitable zone, also laid out list for future observatories, including

• JWST
• Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (launch in 2027)
• Extremely Large Telescope (in 2029)
• Habitable Worlds Observatory (expected to launch in the 2040s)
• Proposed Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE) project