You can tell a lot about how a child will age by looking at their parents, and it turns out that this could be true for planetary systems, too. Scientists have performed cosmic genealogy on planetary systems in the Milky Way, finding two distinct families that influence the evolution and fate of these systems.
The study team, led by researchers at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), studied 300 of the best-understood multiplanet systems of the over 1,000 that astronomers have discovered in the Milky Way.
The team's research clarifies how the environments around infant stars directly affect planetary fates and, in turn, the survival of extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, that are potentially capable of hosting life. That could be crucial as astronomers search for life beyond the solar system, pointing them to systems with potentially habitable planets like Earth.
English (US)