What type of planet would be the most suitable for locating extraterrestrial life? According to the latest study carried out by researchers at McMaster University (Canada), the best places to find life would be massive moons larger even than the planet Mars.
To reach this conclusion, scientists have modeled planetary systems using both observations of giant planets beyond our visual range through telescopes and data from our own solar system, showing that some exoplanet moons could be habitable , since they meet all three most relevant characteristics: they have water to propitiate and sustain life, they have an adequate size and their position with respect to their star is also the ideal one.
“We may be just a few decades away from proving if there is life elsewhere. During all this time, we have been looking at other planets, when the answer could be in a moon ”, explains René Heller, leader of the study.
And is that until now, research had focused on exoplanets. Studying the moons of planets as huge as Jupiter could reveal a suitable climate for life to emerge and evolve, although, at the moment, the existence of any has not been confirmed .
In any case, with a number of known exoplanets that does not stop growing (there are already about 4,000 discovered) and with the unstoppable advance in space technology, we could discover one of these exomoons very soon. The next PLATO space mission (to be launched in 2024) or the European Extremely Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory (to be launched in 2022) could be responsible for revealing this long-awaited treasure.
The results of the study have been published in the journals Astronomy and Astrophysics and The Astrophysical Journal .
