Exomoons Could Be Habitable for Billions of Years, Provided they have Hydrogen Atmospheres

Artist’s impressions depicts three Mars-mass moons, two of which have liquid surface water and one of which is dry, orbiting a giant planet with rings. Credit: René Heller (with PlanetMaker)/Kevin M. Gill

Liquid water is considered essential for life. Surprisingly, however, stable conditions that are conducive to life could exist far from any sun. A research team from the Excellence Cluster ORIGINS at LMU and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) has shown that moons around free-floating planets can keep their water oceans liquid for up to 4.3 billion years by virtue of dense hydrogen atmospheres and tidal heating—that is to say, for almost as long as Earth has existed and sufficient time for complex life to develop.

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