UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

Hydrogen-spewing volcanoes could boost the temperatures of seemingly frigid alien planets enough to maintain liquid water on their surfaces, making the worlds potentially habitable to life as we know it, a new study suggests.

If the newfound TRAPPIST-1h — the most distant of a set of seven Earth-size worlds that orbit a dwarf star just 39 light-years from Earth — boasted such volcanoes, it could be warm enough to hold onto water, study team members said.

In the past, scientists determined that the "habitable zone" — the range of distances from a star that can support liquid water on a world's surface — expands when planets have hydrogen in their atmospheres. However, because hydrogen is such a light gas, it quickly escapes to space, leaving such planets devoid of it within a few tens of millions of years. [5 Amazing Facts About the TRAPPIST-1 System (Video)]

But active volcanoes could change that, according to the new study.

"Our volcanic-hydrogen habitable zone is different, because so long as volcanism is intense enough, it can outpace the rate at which hydrogen escapes into space," lead author Ramses Ramirez, a planetary scientist at Cornell University in New York, told Space.com by email.

Ramirez and fellow planetary scientist Lisa Kaltenegger, also at Cornell, examined how active hydrogen-rich volcanos could continue to resupply a planet with a hydrogen atmosphere. They found the activity could increase the size of the habitable zone by as much as 60 percent, dramatically extending the region where habitable planets might lie.

According to Ramirez, the increased volcanism "allows potentially habitable conditions for much longer geologic timescales."

Stellar temperature versus distance from the star compared to Earth for the classic habitable zone (shaded blue) and the volcanic habitable zone extension (shaded red).
**Credit: R. Ramirez, Carl Sagan Institute, Cornell University**

Improving the odds

The hunt for signs of life on worlds beyond the solar system tends to focus on the habitable zone, because water is crucial to life as we know it. (While other evolutionary paths are possible, scientists prefer to focus on the one known to have succeeded at least once.)

While studying possibilities for early Mars, Ramirez and Kaltenegger realized that massive outgassing of hydrogen early in the life of the Red Planet could have made for a warmer, wetter world.

"I liked the idea enough that I decided to extend it to the habitable zone," Ramirez said.

The process works well for small planets like Mars, where internal processes would keep the mantle hydrogen-rich. When volcanoes spew lava from the mantle, they can release hydrogen and hydrogen-rich gases into the atmosphere. A hydrogen-rich atmosphere could bump out the outer edge of the habitable zone by as much as 60 percent, giving more worlds the opportunity to hold onto their life-giving water, Ramirez and Kaltenegger said.

That doesn’t mean larger worlds are out of luck. While massive super-Earths are more likely to release hydrogen-poor gases into the air, they could still have enough volcanoes spewing material to outpace the escape of hydrogen into space. Such large worlds also have gravity on their side and are more likely to boast magnetic fields, both of which slow down hydrogen's escape into space.

The exact properties of these volcanoes would depend on their home planet. A planet's mass (which affects how strongly gravity tugs at the lava) and whether it has plate tectonics play key roles in building its volcanoes. On Earth, collision and disruption of the crust through tectonics mix up the material that becomes the lava, creating a variety of chemical compositions. On Mars, where gravity is low and the crust is a single large plate, Ramirez said, volcanic material is less evolved, and the lava flows pile up to create huge volcanoes, including the largest in the solar system, Olympus Mons. [Supervolcanoes Found On Mars (Video)]

Dense hydrogen atmospheres on alien worlds could still bear a strong similarity to Earth's. That could have implications for our young planet, Ramirez said.

"One idea suggested that hydrogen gas concentrations may have been high on the early Earth," he said. (Today, hydrogen is but a trace component of Earth's atmosphere, which is 78 percent nitrogen and 21 percent oxygen.) "If that hypothesis is true, early Earth may have resembled these hydrogen-rich exoplanets."

The research was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The hunt for life

Last week, scientists announced the discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 system, a series of seven rocky worlds, each about the same size as Earth, around a dwarf star. At least three of the worlds appear to fall within the habitable zone, assuming they have Earth-like atmospheres.

TRAPPIST-1h, the most distant of the seven worlds, seems to be out in the cold. But if the small planet has volcanoes venting hydrogen gas, it could just make the cut for habitability, study team members said.

According to Ramirez, TRAPPIST-1h lies just outside the new volcanic hydrogen habitable zone.

"But it is really close," he said. If volcanoes on the planet released a bit more hydrogen than the team’s models call for, it could hold onto liquid water, he added.

That could mean good news in the hunt for life. Because the TRAPPIST-1 system lies only 39 light-years from Earth, it will make a good target for studying the atmospheres of planets with observatories like NASA's $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in late 2018.

Exoplanet atmospheres are beginning to release their secrets. When a world passes between Earth and its star, the planet's atmosphere absorbs some of the light, allowing scientists to study the atmosphere's composition.

Even if "biosignature" gases were found in a planet’s atmosphere, it could still be a challenge to determine if they were produced by living organisms or through other processes, Ramirez said. Still, just locating the signatures would be easier with volcanically active worlds, since hydrogen "puffs up" the atmosphere around a planet, creating a larger atmospheric signal that would be easier to study.

"Biosignatures would be easier to detect in these hydrogen-rich atmospheres," Ramirez said.

Follow Nola Taylor Redd on Twitter @NolaTRedd or Google+. Follow us at @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Each week we uncover the most interesting and informative articles from around the world, here are 10 of the coolest stories in science this week.

Looking for a light source

**MAMMOTH-1, an enormous Lyman-alpha nebula (ELAN) found in a protocluster 10 billion light-years away. The colors and contours indicate surface brightness, and the red arrows show its estimated size.**
**Credit: Cai et al./Astrophysical Journal**

A nebula is an interstellar cloud of gases and dust; an ELAN is a special kind of nebula, so named because it emits Lyman-alpha radiation — a particular wavelength of light emitted when the electron in a hydrogen atom drops down to its lowest energy level. The discovery of a new and rarely seen nebula 10 billion light-years away has created a cosmic mystery: What is lighting up this dusty cloud of gases? [Read more about the nebula.]

Strange sex-life

<em>Myolaimus ibericus</em> seen under a scanning electron microscope. Species of the genus <em>Myolaimus</em> are rare, and this worm is unusual in that it pumps sperm into the female genitalia without the penis-like spicules that are common in nematodes. — *Myolaimus ibericus* seen under a scanning electron microscope. Species of the genus *Myolaimus* are rare, and this worm is unusual in that it pumps sperm into the female genitalia without the penis-like spicules that are common in nematodes.
**Credit: Joaquín Abolafia**

A new worm discovered on the Iberian Peninsula is missing something: a penis.

The tiny nematode, found in a compost pile, mates without penetration. Instead, it pumps a capsule full of sperm out of an opening in its body and into a funnel-like structure on the female's vulva. From there, the sperm enter the female's reproductive tract to fertilize her eggs. [Read more about odd worm.]

To the moon

SpaceX will launch two paying passengers on a private flight around the moon in late 2018, the company's founder Elon Musk said Monday, Feb. 27, 2017. The mission would launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy seen here in this artist's illustration and take about five days to loop around the moon and return to Earth.
**Credit: SpaceX**

SpaceX will fly two private citizens on a trip around the moon in 2018, the company's founder Elon Musk announced Monday (Feb. 27).

The private spaceflight company will use its Falcon Heavy rocket to send the two paying passengers into space aboard one of the company's Dragon spacecraft. The two private citizens, who have not yet been named, approached SpaceX about taking a trip around the moon, and have "already paid a significant deposit" for the cost of the mission, according to a statement from the company. [Read more about trip.]

Red-hot center

**The upper layer of Earth's mantle, labeled here as the asthenosphere, is hotter than previously thought, a new study finds.**
**Credit: vectortatu/Shutterstock**

How hot are Earth's scorching insides? A sweltering 2,570 degrees Fahrenheit (1,410 degrees Celsius), a new study finds.

The discovery reveals that the mantle under Earth's oceans — the area just below the crust that extends down to the planet's inner liquid core — is almost 110 degrees F (60 degrees C) hotter than scientists previously thought, the researchers said. [Read more about center of the Earth.]

Childlessness condemned

A person's decision to not have children can spark "moral outrage" in others, even total strangers, a new study finds.

The study comes as more adults in the U.S. are deciding to delay having children, or to forgo having children entirely. [Read more about the odd reaction.]

In life and death

The wrapped body of Louise de Quengo, a church patron buried at the Jacobin convent in the city of Rennes in 1656. Her body was interred with her husband's preserved heart in a lead urn on top of her coffin.
**Credit: © 2016 Colleter et al.**

Forget roses and chocolates. Modern-day romantic gestures pale in comparison to what one Renaissance couple did after death: The wife went to her final rest with her husband's heart on her coffin. The discoveries raise questions about medieval European funerary rites, researchers from the University of Toulouse in France wrote in the study, published in December in the journal PLOS ONE. [Read more about the eternal love.]

Antarctic heat

**Antartica is seeing record-breaking, spring-like temperatures.**
**Credit: Christopher Wood/Shutterstock**

Temperatures on the Antarctic continent reached a record-breaking high of 63.5 degrees Fahrenheit (17.5 degrees Celsius) in 2015, according to a new report of balmy records for the bottom of the world.

And things got even toastier back on Jan. 30, 1982, when the thermometer peaked at 67.6 degrees F (19.8 degrees C) at Signy Research Station on Antarctica's Signy Island, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a division of the United Nations. [Read more about the record.]

Ancient bones

Scientists recently found evidence of ancient lifeforms in rocks in Canada. Within these fossils were tiny tubes of a mineral called hematite, a form of iron. The researchers believe these tubes are relics of an ancient form of microbial life that lived near hydrothermal vents.
**Credit: Matthew Dodd**

Ancient traces of microbial life that are between 3.77 billion and 4.29 billion years old might have been unearthed in a rocky outcropping in Canada, a new study suggests. However, some scientists are casting doubt on what the findings truly mean.

If the new microfossils truly are evidence of primordial life that once sprang up in ancient hydrothermal vents, it suggests that life began on Earth soon after the planet coalesced, the study authors said. [Read more about the fossils.]

Hunting fortune

**Found in a field near the town of Leek in the United Kingdom, the gold jewelry dates back sometime between 400 B.C. and 250 B.C. and could be the oldest example of gold work discovered in Britain.**
**Credit: copyright Staffordshire City Council**

Two amateurs using metal detectors have discovered four gold torques from more than 2,000 years ago in a field near the town of Leek in central England.

The jewelry, which would have been worn as a necklace or bracelet, "dates to around 400 to 250 B.C., and is probably the earliest Iron Age goldwork ever discovered in Britain," Julia Farley, curator of British and European Iron Age collections at the British Museum in London, said in a statement. [Read more about the link between the treasure.]

Kinky arachnids

**Female spiders have paired reproductive organs, so it's possible for two males to mate with a single female at one time.**
**Credit: Matthew Persons**

One autumn night while searching for spiders in his backyard, Matthew Persons came across something unexpected: a wolf spider ménage à trois.

The findings are the first cases on record of one female and two male wolf spiders (Rabidosa punctulata) in a three-way lovefest, a feat that's possible because the females have paired reproductive organs. But this ménage à trois wasn't purely for pleasure. [Read more about the spiders.]

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