Physicists explore possibility of life beyond Earth | Science & Technology

Stars fall into seven lettered categories according to their surface temperature. They also differ in other factors including mass, luminosity, and radius. F-types are in the middle of the scale, hotter and more massive than our sun. F-type stars are yellowish white in color and have surface temperatures of more than 10,000 degrees.

A habitable zone (HZ) is the distance from a star at which water could exist on orbiting planets’ surfaces. In the research led by doctoral student Shaan Patel and co-authored by professors Manfred Cuntz and Nevin Weinberg, the physicists presented a detailed statistical analysis of the currently known planet-hosting F-type stars using the NASA Exoplanet Archive. The archive is an online exoplanet and star data service that collects data for research.

“F-type stars are usually considered the high-luminosity end of stars with a serious prospect for allowing an environment for planets favorable for life,” Dr. Cuntz said. “However, those stars are often ignored by the scientific community. Although F-type stars have a shorter lifetime than our sun, they have a wider HZ. In short, F-type stars are not hopeless in the context of astrobiology.”

“F-type star systems are important and intriguing cases when dealing with habitability due to the larger HZs,” Patel said. “HZs are defined as areas in which conditions are right for Earth-type bodies to potentially host exolife.” Exolife is the possibility that life may exist outside our solar system.

After excluding systems with little information about planets, the team identified 206 systems of interest. “We further broke down those 18 systems into four sub-categories depending on how much time they would spend in the HZ,” said Patel.

In one case, the planet HD 111998, also known as 38 Virginis, is always situated in…