TY - JOUR

T1 - Habitability Properties of Circumbinary Planets

AU - Shevchenko, Ivan I.

PY - 2017/6/1

Y1 - 2017/6/1

N2 - It is shown that several habitability conditions (in fact, at least seven such conditions) appear to be fulfilled automatically by circumbinary planets of main-sequence stars (CBP-MS), whereas on Earth, these conditions are fulfilled only by chance. Therefore, it looks natural that most of the production of replicating biopolymers in the Galaxy is concentrated on particular classes of CBP-MS, and life on Earth is an outlier, in this sense. In this scenario, Lathe's mechanism for the tidal "chain reaction" abiogenesis on Earth is favored as generic for CBP-MS, due to photo-tidal synchronization inherent to them. Problems with this scenario are discussed in detail.

AB - It is shown that several habitability conditions (in fact, at least seven such conditions) appear to be fulfilled automatically by circumbinary planets of main-sequence stars (CBP-MS), whereas on Earth, these conditions are fulfilled only by chance. Therefore, it looks natural that most of the production of replicating biopolymers in the Galaxy is concentrated on particular classes of CBP-MS, and life on Earth is an outlier, in this sense. In this scenario, Lathe's mechanism for the tidal "chain reaction" abiogenesis on Earth is favored as generic for CBP-MS, due to photo-tidal synchronization inherent to them. Problems with this scenario are discussed in detail.

KW - astrobiology

KW - binaries: general

KW - methods: analytical

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85020855276&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.3847/1538-3881/aa71b2

DO - 10.3847/1538-3881/aa71b2

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85020855276

VL - 153

JO - Astronomical Journal

JF - Astronomical Journal

SN - 0004-6256

IS - 6

M1 - 273

ER -