A new study supported by the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) indicates that some terrestrial planets in the habitable zones of low mass stars could be the evaporated cores of small Neptune-like planets.

University of Washington (UW) graduate student Rodrigo Luger, professors Rory Barnes and Victoria Meadows, and collaborators published results from an interdisciplinary model that show photoevaporation can remove hydrogen and helium from small, gaseous exoplanets, transforming them into potentially habitable worlds. While these planets are likely to be very different from Earth in composition, they should have abundant surface water, one of the principal ingredients for habitability.

The study from the Virtual Planetary Laboratory (VPL) at UW was published in the January issue of Astrobiology.