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Despite Deadly Rays, Pulsars Could Host Habitable Planets

MaeZe

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This looks like it could be great material for some unique world building.

Despite Deadly Rays, Pulsars Could Host Habitable Planets
Although pulsars regularly blast out deadly gamma rays and X-rays, alien planets in orbit around them could theoretically be habitable, a new study finds.

However, these pulsar worlds are likely not friendly to humans — according to the study, the planets' environment would be more like the bottom of the sea on Earth.

... Neutron star matter is the densest known material — a sugar cube-size piece has the mass of a mountain, about 100 million tons. The mass of a single neutron star exceeds that of the sun while fitting into a ball smaller in diameter than London. [Inside a Neutron Star (Infographic)]

Pulsars rotate extraordinarily rapidly, up to thousands of revolutions per second, and they flash like lighthouse beacons — hence their name, which is short for "pulsating star." They regularly blaze with gamma rays and X-rays and spew out energetic particles. According to the new study's researchers, the Milky Way galaxy hosts about 1 billion neutron stars, about 200,000 of which are pulsars.

Despite the violent nature of pulsars, they can still have planets. In fact, the first exoplanets that astronomers discovered orbit the pulsar B1257+12, located about 2,300 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Virgo.

Three worlds are known to orbit B1257+12, one of which is about one-fiftieth Earth's mass, while the other two are "super-Earths" about four times Earth's mass. Since these three exoplanets were discovered in 1992, astronomers have also discovered one Jupiter-size world around the pulsar PSR J1719–1438 and another Jupiter-size world around PSR B1620-26, which is a binary system containing a pulsar and a white dwarf star.

Now researchers suggest that life could exist on those pulsar-orbiting planets. ...

The scientists used the Chandra Space Observatory to analyze X-rays from the pulsar B1257+12. Their calculations suggest this pulsar's two super-Earths might be warm enough to have liquid water on their surfaces, Patruno said. [The X-Ray Universe: Chandra X-Ray Space Observatory Pictures]

The researchers noted the habitability of planets around pulsars depended on at least two key findings. For one, atmospheres a million times thicker than Earth's are likely needed to protect any life on their surfaces from pulsar radiation. This would make conditions on these worlds similar to ones found in Earth's deep seas.

"The atmospheric pressure you find on the surface of these planets is comparable to or even higher than the pressure you have in the Mariana Trench," which at 36,000 feet deep (11,000 meters) is the deepest known point on Earth's surface, Kama said.

"However, since we know that life exists in the depths of our ocean, some form of life might certainly exist in these high pressure and warm environments," Patruno said. ...

For worlds in the habitable zones of pulsars, "the high energy particles and radiation will keep the atmosphere warm enough to allow liquid warm water to exist," Patruno said. "Since there is hardly any visible light reaching the planet — pulsars emit almost no visible light — this opens up very unexpected scenarios for exotic habitable environments."
 

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Could lead to fascinating world-building in the right hands! Someone like Robert Forward maybe?
 

blacbird

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Note the phrase "more like the bottom of the sea on earth". The headline use of the word "habitable" is an atrocious misuse of both idea and language. We are already pretty confident about the existence of ice-covered oceans on Europa and Enceladus, and possibly other places, within our own solar system, which might contain environments where organic life could have originated. But none would be even remotedly considered "habitable" in a human sense.

caw
 

MaeZe

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Sure but it's not just about finding living organisms. How do you get a technologically sophisticated society under water? How do they do something as simple as writing or building a rocket ship?

Here's a possibility for a completely different world, not necessarily underwater but maybe a third option. There are all kinds of potential sci-fi scenarios there.
 
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