Immersive clues of two water worlds

Astronomers have discovered over 5.000 exoplanets, or planets beyond our solar system, and suspect there are probably over a trillion in our Milky Way Galaxy alone. Now, scientists have identified two "water worlds".

Water could make up as much as half the mass of these planets.

exoplanet

"It's the best evidence yet for water worlds, a type of planet that astronomers thought existed for a long time," said Björn Benneke, an exoplanet researcher at of Montreal who did the research. The research posted this week in the scientific journal Nature.

The planets are named Kepler-138 c and Kepler-138 d. They were named after the spaceman NASA's Kepler, which to date has detected thousands of exoplanets and revolutionized our understanding of what lies beyond our solar system, in the deep .

These two water worlds reside in a solar system 218 light-years away and are "unlike any planet in our solar system," he says the European Space Agency.

The Kepler space telescope as we mentioned above discovered these planets. But astronomers then looked deeper into these worlds with both the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

They discovered that the exoplanets are three times the size of Earth, but had much less mass, which means they are less dense.

This was an interesting observation: Until now, planets slightly larger than Earth appear to be rocky worlds (also known as “super-Earths”). However, Kepler-138 c and Kepler-138 d are more similar to our solar system's ice-covered moons, such as Jupiter's Europa and Saturn's Enceladus. These moons shoot icy particles into space. Planetary scientists suspect that oceans may exist beneath the icy surface of these moons.

But Kepler-138 c and Kepler-138 d show more thermal energy than these icy moons.

"Imagine larger versions of Europa or Enceladus, the water-rich moons that orbit Jupiter and Saturn, but that are much closer to their star," said Caroline Piaulet, a scientist at the Institute for Exoplanet Research at the University of Montreal. , who led the research.

"Instead of a frozen surface, they host water vapor." The scientist refers to an atmosphere with a lot of moisture in the air as Kepler-138 d is extremely s. Therefore its atmosphere could be water vapor.

What's important about these latest observations of Kepler-138 c and Kepler-138 d is that scientists haven't directly detected water on the planets. But simulations of what these worlds look like – based on their mass, size and other factors – suggest they are made of “materials that are lighter than rock but heavier than hydrogen or helium,” the European Space Agency explains .

"The most common candidate material is water."

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Written by giorgos

George still wonders what he's doing here ...

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