When we think about finding life beyond Earth, we immediately think of looking for an Earth-like planet that has similar conditions to ours.
We want an exoplanet that orbits its star safely in the HZ, has a substantial atmosphere that allows for a liquid water ocean to exist on its surface,
There’s more than meets the eye out there in space. Scientists are finding that exoplanets like those most certainly have life.
Some planets have been found to orbit their parent star in noncircular orbits, or very eccentric orbits.
This also means that there is a very eccentric planet orbiting a star with a particularly large HZ, meaning there could be life elsewhere in the universe.
day/night cycle?
If we receive too much solar energy input, the atmosphere will begin to heat up, but we will still be able to protect ourselves from excessive heating and cooling with ocean and atmosphere layers.
The innermost planet, Mercury, has the highest eccentricity in our solar system.
The four Galilean moons of Jupiter have eccentricities that vary from moderate to high.
In our solar system, we don’t observe highly eccentric orbits.
Planets in other solar systems have already shown us that very few solar systems are similar to ours.