CNN - Without a carbon-rich atmosphere, it’s unlikely a planet would be hospitable to living things. Carbon molecules are, after all, considered the building blocks of life. And the findings don’t bode well for other types of planets orbiting M dwarfs, said study coauthor Michelle Hill, a planetary scientist and a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Riverside.
“The pressure from the star’s radiation is immense, enough to blow a planet’s atmosphere away,” Hill said in a post on the university’s website.