We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: we don’t fully understand how solar systems form. Planetary scientists want to solve this problem, and different teams are looking at all the different aspects of solar system formation and evolution.

In fact, one team is even imagining what the fate of a world like Mars would be if it were placed in orbits around other kinds of stars. Presenting their work at this week’s American Geophysical Union conference in New Orleans, a multidisciplinary team looks at how our planet Mars would keep or lose its atmosphere in situations such as orbiting a small but occasionally violent red dwarf star. According to team member David Brain: Mars is a remarkable natural experiment that demonstrates how its atmosphere and, therefore, its habitability can be affected by the properties of both the planet and the star it orbits.

Oh, and that imaginary Mars around a red dwarf? It would lose its atmosphere faster than our real Mars has. And so far, a solar system with a long-term habitable Mars just hasn’t been described. We hope they’re saving that result for a future paper.

More Information

LASP press release