'Eyeballing other earths' The theory suggests that water freezes on a planet's dark side,
while the light side is arid, leaving a thin band of liquid water around the
middle.
As a result, the planets have a permanent day side and permanent night
side. This means that the water is trapped unable to reach the temperate
side of the planet, creating huge glaciers on the cold, dark side.
If the
water moved around to the hot, daytime side of the planets, however, the water
would simply evaporate. On the night-side there would still be ice covering the
surface, creating an unusual 'eyeball earth' effect. 'Eyeball earth' planets where only one side
gets heat, leaving the other permanently frozen, could one day support human
life but who'd want to live there Potentially inhabitable planets may have water 'locked' on their dark
sides. Life may be possible in the narrow band between their dark and
light sides, where water can stay in liquid form without evaporating or
freezing. These possibly inhabitable planets are known as 'eyeball earths'

Earth-like
planets may be able to support life in a small area of their surface even if
most of their water is permanently frozen, a new study has found. Planets
that orbit red dwarf stars, known as exoplanets, can become 'tidally locked' so
that their water is frozen on their permanently cold night-time sides but they
could still sustain life, astronomer Kristen Menou at Columbia University has
explained.
Just as our moon is tidally locked to the Earth, only showing us one
hemisphere, the same is true of these exoplanets facing red dwarves. Potentially
habitable: Planets that orbit red dwarf stars, right, may have water 'tidally
locked' on their surface that could still sustain life. This leaves only a thin
band of water around the planet where the temperature was just right for it to
remain liquid, and this is where organisms could grow. This band is hoped
to exist on planets very close to red dwarfs, which are not as hot as our sun. Above is expandable foam perfect for Europa planet Saturn's Moon.



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