Stars May Change Mini-Neptunes into Habitable Planets

UWAB graduate student Rodrigo Luger, professors Rory Barnes and Victoria Meadows, and collaborators have found that some terrestrial planets in the habitable zones of low mass stars could be the evaporated cores of small Neptune-like planets. While these planets are likely to be very different from Earth in composition, they should have abundant surface water, one of the principal ingredients for habitability. The paper was published in the January issue of Astrobiology.