The TRAPPIST-1 planetary system consists of seven Earth-sized planets orbiting a very cold dwarf, located 120 light-years from us. The age of this star, and consequently of its planets, is from 5 to 10 billion years – almost twice as much as the age of our own solar system. For scientists who search for life in the Universe, a great age means sufficient time for the development of chemical and evolutionary processes similar to the processes that led to the formation of life on Earth. On the other hand, these planets are so close to the star that during these billions of years, stellar winds could completely “blow away” their atmospheres.
In the new study, astronomers led by Federico Fraschetti from Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Center, USA, conducted a theoretical simulation of the effect of high-energy protons of the solar wind on nearby exoplanets. These particles are formed as a result of solar flares or shock waves under the influence of changes in the magnetic field occurring in the corona of our star. Measuring the parameters of solar flares became the basis for the model built by these scientists.
Astronomers for the first time carried out in this work a realistic simulation of the propagation of high-energy particles through a turbulent magnetic field in the vicinity of a dwarf of spectral class M and its stellar wind, and then adapted the results to the calculation of the TRAPPIST-1 system. According to the simulation results, the flows of high-energy particles coming from the TRAPPIST-1 star are concentrated in two oppositely directed streams lying in the orbital plane of the planets, therefore the hypothetical inhabited planet TRAPPIST-1e lying near the star would experience the proton flux in itself millions of times more powerful than the proton stream bombarding the earth. However, the authors do not exclude that a number of uncertainties unresolved in this study, such as, for example, the uncertainty of the angle between the magnetic field and the axis of rotation of a star, can cause a change in the power of the stream of protons bombarding the planet many times.
High-energy particles can bombard TRAPPIST-1 exoplanets
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