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The Habitability of the Galactic Bulge

We present a new investigation of the habitability of the Milky Way bulge, that expands previous studies on the Galactic Habitable Zone. We discuss existing knowledge on the abundance of planets in the bulge, metallicity and the possible frequency of rocky planets, orbital stability and encounters,...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Balbi, Amedeo, Hami, Maryam, Kovačević, Andjelka
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7459951/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32756403
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/life10080132
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author Balbi, Amedeo
Hami, Maryam
Kovačević, Andjelka
author_facet Balbi, Amedeo
Hami, Maryam
Kovačević, Andjelka
author_sort Balbi, Amedeo
collection PubMed
description We present a new investigation of the habitability of the Milky Way bulge, that expands previous studies on the Galactic Habitable Zone. We discuss existing knowledge on the abundance of planets in the bulge, metallicity and the possible frequency of rocky planets, orbital stability and encounters, and the possibility of planets around the central supermassive black hole. We focus on two aspects that can present substantial differences with respect to the environment in the disk: (i) the ionizing radiation environment, due to the presence of the central black hole and to the highest rate of supernovae explosions and (ii) the efficiency of putative lithopanspermia mechanism for the diffusion of life between stellar systems. We use analytical models of the star density in the bulge to provide estimates of the rate of catastrophic events and of the diffusion timescales for life over interstellar distances.
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spelling pubmed-74599512020-09-02 The Habitability of the Galactic Bulge Balbi, Amedeo Hami, Maryam Kovačević, Andjelka Life (Basel) Article We present a new investigation of the habitability of the Milky Way bulge, that expands previous studies on the Galactic Habitable Zone. We discuss existing knowledge on the abundance of planets in the bulge, metallicity and the possible frequency of rocky planets, orbital stability and encounters, and the possibility of planets around the central supermassive black hole. We focus on two aspects that can present substantial differences with respect to the environment in the disk: (i) the ionizing radiation environment, due to the presence of the central black hole and to the highest rate of supernovae explosions and (ii) the efficiency of putative lithopanspermia mechanism for the diffusion of life between stellar systems. We use analytical models of the star density in the bulge to provide estimates of the rate of catastrophic events and of the diffusion timescales for life over interstellar distances. MDPI 2020-08-03 /pmc/articles/PMC7459951/ /pubmed/32756403 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/life10080132 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Balbi, Amedeo
Hami, Maryam
Kovačević, Andjelka
The Habitability of the Galactic Bulge
title The Habitability of the Galactic Bulge
title_full The Habitability of the Galactic Bulge
title_fullStr The Habitability of the Galactic Bulge
title_full_unstemmed The Habitability of the Galactic Bulge
title_short The Habitability of the Galactic Bulge
title_sort habitability of the galactic bulge
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7459951/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32756403
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/life10080132
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