Recently discovered exo planet around faint red dwarf star Barnard’s Star is very likely habitable or conducive of development of life on the surface or sub-surface of the planet.
One of the nearest exo-planets near our own solar system could support primitive life, scientists have announced. The nearby world – orbiting around Barnard’s Star, the second closest star system to our own is known as a super-Earth and has the potential to serve as a home for simple alien life.
Barnard’s Star is a low mass Red Dwarf star, about 14.5% of Solar Mass and about 20% of our Sun’s diameter or some 280 000km. The Star is around 9 billion years old, or twice as old as our own Sun, but surface temperature is barely 3140 kelvin, about as half as hot as our Sun.
Due to the orbit of the planet which is around 60 million km around its host star, the planet is probably very cold, at minus 170 degrees centigrade. But if Bernard’s b has similar make up to own Earth, with large Iron-Nickle core, with strong magnetic field and strong geothermal activity, as scientists predict, it might be able to harbour primitive life. That is according to Villanova University astrophysicists Edward Guinan and Scott Engle who announced their findings at a major meeting of astronomers.
The researchers suggest that the planet, known as Barnard b, might be surprisingly habitable as a result of the processes that are happening underneath its surface. “Geothermal heating could support 'life zones' under its surface, akin to subsurface lakes found in Antarctica,” Guinan said. “We note that the surface temperature on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa is similar to Barnard b but, because of tidal heating, Europa probably has liquid oceans under its icy surface.”
Scientists announced the discovery of Barnard's b in November, but it was described as being very hostile to any possible life: it is an icy desert, without liquid water, where the sun shines only dimly and the temperature is cold enough to kill any life that might flourish. But the suggestion of heat flowing from underneath its surface could make it a better home than they thought.
The planet has a mass just over three times that of the Earth, and goes around its star every 233 days, at roughly the same distance that Mercury orbits the Sun. Researchers now hope they can look more at the planet in an attempt to understand its "atmosphere, surface, and potential habitability". It is very faint in the sky, but future large telescopes could allow us to get a better look at it.
Whatever they find in the future, the planet has already shown us that such planets might be more common than we'd realised, suggesting that yet more of them are waiting to be found. The most significant aspect of the discovery of Barnard’s star b is that the two nearest star systems to the Sun are now known to host planets. This supports previous studies based on Kepler Mission data, inferring that planets can be very common throughout the galaxy.
Question of potential human colonization of the planet Bernard’s b one day? As more data on the newly discovered planet becomes available and hopefully with the launch of new powerful telescopes that are coming online in near future we might peak in to the Planet’s atmosphere as well as study the planet in greater detail, revelling more information about the planet.
Again, further research is needed, but planets with such mass would still produce relatively small increase in surface gravity and escape velocity, opening the doors for future human colonization. However, there still might be earth-sized planets in the system with even better prospects for future human colonization.

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