Until recently, red dwarf systems were thought to be almost hopeless for possible life, due to the strong flares of such stars. It has now been revealed that their world can maintain a comfortable, water-rich atmosphere for billions of years. According to astronomers’ calculations, red dwarfs make up more than 70% of all stars in the Milky Way and the absolute majority of the universe as a whole. These low-mass, dim and not-too-hot luminaries have an important advantage: they live for a very long time, that is, they burn thermonuclear fuel in their cores.

This process may last much longer than the existence of the universe. By comparison, heavy stars such as the famous Betelgeuse (with a mass of at least 16 Suns) “burn out” and explode as supernovae in just 10-15 million years. True, for all their apparent slowness and slowness, red dwarfs occasionally produce such flares that seem innocent compared to those on the sun. This led many scientists to come to a disappointing conclusion about the impossibility of life on planets in such stars: according to researchers, the radiation of red dwarfs quickly burns all living things and often does not even allow possible living conditions to exist – it completely evaporates surface water.

Recently, researchers from the University of Washington (USA) concluded that this is not the case. Moreover, in an article published in a magazine Nature Communication Scientists noted that the existence of a habitable atmosphere on some rocky planets known to be close to red dwarfs cannot currently be ruled out. Especially in the TRAPPIST-1 system, it is 40 light years away from us.

This system became famous for observing the complete dispersion of solid Earth-like worlds of roughly equal size in circular orbits. Moreover, three of them are in the so-called Goldilocks zone – an ideal distance from the star, neither too hot nor too cold, as is necessary for water to exist in liquid form.

For example, American astronomers decided to compare the situation on two planets in this system: TRAPPIST-1b, which is closest to the star, and TRAPPIST-1e, which is the fourth farthest. Both are many times closer to their sun than Mercury is to our star. But this sun itself is a red dwarf, slightly larger than Jupiter. With such a program, TRAPPIST-1e appears to be right in the zone of potential life activity.

Based on all the data about these worlds, scientists have modeled their evolutionary process. By the way, this system is estimated to be 7.6 billion years old, that is, three billion years older than the Solar System. The simulations showed that overall things were really bad for TRAPPIST-1b, as observations from the James Webb telescope showed. However, there is a high probability that the fourth planet will be the second Earth.

According to the astronomers’ calculations, moisture on the surface of TRAPPIST-1e in the early stages should also have evaporated quickly. But so much water can form in the planet’s mantle, then leak out and create a completely stable atmosphere.

As scientists emphasize, the exoplanets closest to red dwarfs are much easier to observe than more distant worlds; hence there is no definitive observational data yet on the presence or absence of habitable conditions in TRAPPIST-1e, but that is what is interesting. Let’s add that promising Earth-like planets have also been observed near other red dwarfs. One of the most famous examples is Proxima Centauri, the star system closest to the Sun.