Location
Hill Aerospace Museum, Theater
Start Date
5-6-2014 3:48 PM
Description
The topic of extrasolar planet habitability has been a subject of much debate in recent decades. During this time, however, consideration for potentially massive satellites around these planets has seen relatively little attention. The detection of massive exomoons has now become feasible, which naturally leads to questions about their habitability. Previous studies have suggested that exomoons in M dwarf star systems cannot possibly host habitable moons in the stellar habitable zones due to stability and tidal heating considerations. However, these studies did not include a model that couples gravitational scattering with tidal evolution. In this paper we report on our development of a computation model which efficiently calculates self-consistently the tidal, spin, and dynamical evolution of a satellite system. Using the model we simulate three-body interactions between M dwarf stars and their hypothetical planet-moon binaries in the steller habitable zones. Our results tend to confirm that exomoons in M dwarf star systems are indeed most likely uninhabitable.
Exomoon Habitability in Low-Mass Star Systems
Hill Aerospace Museum, Theater
The topic of extrasolar planet habitability has been a subject of much debate in recent decades. During this time, however, consideration for potentially massive satellites around these planets has seen relatively little attention. The detection of massive exomoons has now become feasible, which naturally leads to questions about their habitability. Previous studies have suggested that exomoons in M dwarf star systems cannot possibly host habitable moons in the stellar habitable zones due to stability and tidal heating considerations. However, these studies did not include a model that couples gravitational scattering with tidal evolution. In this paper we report on our development of a computation model which efficiently calculates self-consistently the tidal, spin, and dynamical evolution of a satellite system. Using the model we simulate three-body interactions between M dwarf stars and their hypothetical planet-moon binaries in the steller habitable zones. Our results tend to confirm that exomoons in M dwarf star systems are indeed most likely uninhabitable.