Astronomers and alien enthusiasts alike have long been perplexed as to what might be the right kind of atmosphere to support alien life. Maybe not for long anymore, researchers have recently identified another potential habitat that could harbour an extraterrestrial life in the clouds of cold planet-star hybrids known as 'brown dwarfs'.
Brown Dwarf And It's Features: Could It Host Alien Life?
According to reports released by Science Alert, it was found that brown dwarf is a massive stellar objects that are somewhere between planets and stars in size, but without enough mass to kickstart a nuclear reaction. Researcher from the University of Edinburgh in the UK, has allegedly calculated the pressures and temperatures found in the upper atmosphere of a brown dwarf could be similar to those on Earth, and therefore could allow microbes to grow.
Furthermore, planetary scientist Jack Yates believes that you don't necessarily need to have a terrestrial planet with a surface. The scientist and team had reportedly found that these brown dwarfs are made up solely of swirling gas as they have investigated one such object called WISE 0855-0714.
As per Daily Mail, the team has allegedly used calculations from the renowned scientist, Carl Sagan, which was originally intended to investigate the possibility of life on Jupiter. Considering that Jupiter is a gaseous planet, these calculations took into account that the organisms would not need solid ground to survive. Moreover, the researchers were also found to have considered the nature of plankton living on Earth to examine whether similar forms of life could exist within the gaseous clouds of a brown dwarf.
Experts have also revealed that an in-depth work must go into proving the existence of any brown dwarf microbes in future, thus, as of the moment, the idea remains to be hypothetical. Currently, after conducting a series of survey to various properties of 152 suspected young brown dwarfs, Dr Jacqueline Faherty from the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington has found that atmospheric properties could be behind much of their differences. Thus, Dr. Faherty concludes that these young brown dwarfs is more likely to be the siblings of giant exoplanets. As close family members, the expert claimed that we can use them to investigate how the planetary aging process works.
