Exomoons Could Most Likely Be The Home to Aliens

While gazing at the night sky, mankind have always wondered about extraterrestrials and looked for signs as to whether they share the vast universe with other "beings." Now, scientists are hopeful that exomoons could most likely be home to aliens.

Exomoons, also called extrasolar moons, are natural satellites that orbit planets outside our solar system, and could contain liquid water, an essential ingredient of life.

Phil Sutton, an astrophysicist at the University of Lincoln, said the exomoons hold clue to alien life. Sutton explained that the moons can be internally heated by the gravitational pull of the planet they orbit. “It can lead to them having liquid water well outside the normal narrow, "habitable zone" for planets that we are currently trying to find Earth-like planets,” he said. “I believe that if we can find them, moons offer a more promising avenue to finding extra-terrestrial life.”

In 2018, scientists discovered the first-ever exomoon. They found a Neptune-size satellite orbiting the Jupiter-like planet Kepler-1625b, which lies about 8,000 light-years from Earth.

Sutton drew attention to J1407b, the first large gas giant believed to have an enormous ring system outside of the solar system. The J1407b has been described as a "Super Saturn" because the planet is much larger than Jupiter or Saturn and has a ring system which about 200 times larger than Saturn’s rings.

“Gravitational forces between all particles were calculated and used to update the positions, velocities and accelerations in the computer models of J1407b and its ring system,” said Sutton. Astronomers through earlier data found one "clean gap" in the ring structure. Mathew Kenworthy, an astronomer at the Leiden Observatory, explained that the "gap" is most likely to have been formed and carved out by a satellite.

“The findings revealed that while the orbiting moon did have an effect on the scattering of particles along the ring edge, the expected gaps in the ring structure were unlikely to be caused by the gravitational forces of a currently unseen moon orbiting outside J1407b’s rings,” said Sutton. The researcher called on fellow astronomers to monitor the J1407b.

Sutton revealed that the difficulty in finding exomoons is because current methods are not sensitive enough to spot them. He said spotting their planets relies on a process of watching light from a nearby sun and seeing it dim as objects pass in front.