I live near the coast of the Northsea and when I am on the beach and look out over the sea I see a sea that has covered a land known as Doggerland. So in fact I live on the edge of what once was Doggerland.

Doggerland is the area now covered by the North Sea and stretched out from Denmark, Netherlands to England. For about a million years this was most of the time dry land with settlements of Neaderthalers and modern humans. Mammoth herds could be found also herds of horses and reindeer herds, sabletooth cats and rhinos. Because of the melting of glaciers this land became smaller and smaller and eventualy disapeared beneath the waves of the sea. Still much is to be found of that period of Doggerland like artifacts and fossils.

In the search for planets and the habitability of planets we discover interesting solar systems. Let us take a look at TOI 270.

The star is a red dwarf, cooler in temperature then our own sun and has a longer lifespan then our sun. And red dwarf stars emit relatively little light. Its solar flares can be a problem for the evolution of life on its planets.

TOI-270 hosting a system of 3 known planets. It’s discovery announced in 2019.

Artist impression of planet TOI 270b

TOI-270 is a red dwarf star 73.3 light-years (22.5 parsecs) away in the constellation Pictor. It has about

39% the mass and 38% the radius of the Sun, and a temperature of about 3,506 K (3,233 °C; 5,851 °F).

TOI-270 b is a super Earth exoplanet. Its mass is 1.58 Earths, it takes 3.4 days to complete one orbit of its star, and is 0.03197 AU from its star.

TOI-270 c is a Neptune-like exoplanet. Its mass is 6.15 Earths, it takes 5.7 days to complete one orbit of its star, and is 0.04526 AU from its star.

TOI-270 d is a Neptune-like exoplanet. Its mass is 4.78 Earths, it takes 11.4 days to complete one orbit of its star, and is 0.0721 AU from its star.

This discovery is so cool. And it is asking for more research.

I follow live events online in the fields of astronomy, astrophysics and astrobiology. During an event of the Oxford University Space and Astronomy Society, astrophysicist Steven Balbus said the following that triggered me enormously “do the work that is absolutely fascinating to you”. He has an important point there. Do what fascinates you. Do where your passion lies. Especially in these mentally tough times, it is so extremely important that you do what makes sense to you, that you have a sense of purpose. So it is less important that you do something that you have become good at by doing it for years on end. It is more important to discover what really fascinates you. And it is not that difficult. It is not what others think you should do. This comes entirely from within yourself. What gives you pleasure, meaning, what fascinates you, where does your passion lie? It is fun to play around with these questions and also to look back at the time when you were young. Where was that fascination then?

I myself am fascinated with life, the universe, our planet Earth with the complex systems we are part of.