FIT’s Howard Chen investigated why telescopes have yet to find signs of water in the TRAPPIST-1 system, even though several of its planets fall within the star’s habitable zone. Some researchers think a lack of gas in the atmosphere is disrupting the light needed to pick up visuals. Others propose that water escaped the planets’ atmospheres during their evolution.

Chen’s team posits that there was no water to begin with because there was no gas to contain it, due to the high-velocity collision events the system experienced. Instead of acquiring material for a gaseous atmosphere, the planets’ atmospheres were cleared out by the powerful collisions. They ran hundreds of simulations that returned thousands of possibilities for how TRAPPIST-1’s planets might have formed. “Whatever we did, we couldn’t get much water in these inner planets.”

• Howard Chen