Identifying Habitable-zone Planet Systems Susceptible to Nearby Supernovae

Ramos, Angelu; Schonhut-Stasik, Jessica; Payne, A. V.; Stassun, Keivan G.

doi:10.3847/2515-5172/acbaf9

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Perhaps the most interesting results are the distances at which the X-ray emission can impose lethal effects on an Earth-like biosphere. This larger range of influence has consequences for the Galactic habitable zone, such as the harmful implications for recently discovered exoplanets that would be susceptible to nearby SNe (Ramos et al 2023). Importantly, this also opens the discussion for SN X-ray emission having directly influenced Earth's own biosphere.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

X-Ray-luminous Supernovae: Threats to Terrestrial Biospheres

Brunton

O’Mahoney

Fields

et al. 2023

ApJ

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The spectacular outbursts of energy associated with supernovae (SNe) have long motivated research into their potentially hazardous effects on Earth and analogous environments. Much of this research has focused primarily on the atmospheric damage associated with the prompt arrival of ionizing photons within days or months of the initial outburst, and the high-energy cosmic rays that arrive thousands of years after the explosion. In this study, we turn the focus to persistent X-ray emission, arising in certain SNe that have interactions with a dense circumstellar medium and observed months and/or years after the initial outburst. The sustained high X-ray luminosity leads to large doses of ionizing radiation out to formidable distances. We assess the threat posed by these X-ray-luminous SNe for Earth-like planetary atmospheres; our results are rooted in the X-ray SN observations from Chandra, Swift-XRT, XMM-Newton, NuSTAR, and others. We find that this threat is particularly acute for SNe showing evidence of strong circumstellar interaction, such as Type IIn explosions, which have significantly larger ranges of influence than previously expected and lethal consequences up to ∼50 pc away. Furthermore, X-ray-bright SNe could pose a substantial and distinct threat to terrestrial biospheres and tighten the Galactic habitable zone. We urge follow-up X-ray observations of interacting SNe for months and years after the explosion to shed light on the physical nature and full-time evolution of the emission and to clarify the danger that these events pose for life in our galaxy and other star-forming regions.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%