Appears like this Earth, habitable exoplanet

Something seemingly unrelated could be one of the deciding factors in Earth's habitability, and could be the key sign of life that astronomers should be looking for in exoplanets.

According to SciTech Daily, that's a Moon just as big as Earth's Moon. A team of scientists led by Associate Professor Miki Nakajima from the University of Rochester (USA) confirmed that it was the Moon that contributed to the Earth having an ideal environment for life to develop and evolve.

The moon contributes to the regulation of Earth's climate by stabilizing the planet's axis of rotation.

Specifically, the Moon controls the length of days and ocean tides, which influence the circadian cycles of all life forms on the planet. It also contributes to the regulation of Earth's climate through stabilizing the planet's axis of rotation.

Therefore, the team believes that searching for a Moon similar to Earth's Moon is an effective screening tool for astronomers to identify planets with the potential to harbor life.

It must be a large enough Moon to have a moderate impact on its planet. Our moon has a radius greater than a quarter of the radius of the Earth itself, a much larger proportion than most other planet's Moons.

In a paper published in the journal Nature Communications, the team of Associate Professor Nakajima at the University of Rochester and many other scientists from the University of Arizona (USA) and Tokyo Institute of Technology (Japan) examined the formation of the Moon. and concluded that only certain types of planets are capable of forming a large Moon relative to the parent planet.

Earth's moon is thought to have been born from the collision between the young Earth and the Mars-sized planet Theia about 4.5 billion years ago. The impact caused debris to be ejected into space, forming an evaporating disk around Earth's orbit.

Over time, this disk cools to create liquid moon particles - the building blocks of the Moon - which gradually coalesce into a new celestial body.

Rocky planets that are too massive (more than 6 Earth masses) and planets equal to or larger than Earth will create completely evaporating disks, where the growing moon particles are subjected to too much gas pulling and fall back to the parent planet, so what remains is not enough to make a large Moon.

This makes a lot of sense because the current search for exoplanets mainly finds worlds 6 or more Earth masses, simply because they are easier to find than small planets like Earth, but Obviously this will make the dream of finding alien life far away.

Scientists hope the new data will provide the necessary direction for future Earth copy-hunting campaigns, because current telescopes are powerful enough to find many rocky exoplanets as small as Earth, as well as identifying several Moons outside the Solar System.