Science

Judi Lynn

(162,388 posts) Fri Dec 16, 2022, 06:09 AM Dec 2022

Astronomers discover strange twin planets might be water worlds

By Meghan Bartels
published about 19 hours ago

Two planets found by NASA's retired Kepler Space Telescope may be made mostly of water, according to new research.

The two exoplanets, dubbed Kepler-138c and Kepler-138d, orbit a star located about 218 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Lyra. Scientists intrigued by 2014 data from the Kepler Space Telescope decided to revisit the two planets using the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA's retired Spitzer Space Telescope in hopes of better understanding the distant worlds and what they're made of. And surprisingly, the answer might be mostly water.

"We previously thought that planets that were a bit larger than Earth were big balls of metal and rock, like scaled-up versions of Earth, and that's why we called them super-Earths," Björn Benneke, a planetary astrophysicist at the Université de Montréal in Canada and a co-author on the new research, said in a statement.

"However, we have now shown that these two planets, Kepler-138c and d, are quite different in nature: a big fraction of their entire volume is likely composed of water," he said. "It is the first time we observe planets that can be confidently identified as water worlds, a type of planet that was theorized by astronomers to exist for a long time."

More:
https://www.space.com/exoplanets-potential-water-worlds-discovered

3 replies

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Astronomers discover strange twin planets might be water worlds (Original Post) Judi Lynn Dec 2022 OP

"paper! have you ever seen paper!" Javaman Dec 2022 #1

But we need continents. Not true says the dolphin. GreenWave Dec 2022 #2

This is in part why we have not found other intelligent species. PoindexterOglethorpe Dec 2022 #3

Javaman

(63,109 posts)

1. "paper! have you ever seen paper!"

Reply to Judi Lynn (Original post)

Fri Dec 16, 2022, 07:50 AM

Dec 2022

GreenWave

(9,196 posts)

2. But we need continents. Not true says the dolphin.

Reply to Judi Lynn (Original post)

Fri Dec 16, 2022, 09:04 AM

Dec 2022

Is our Earth II larger? If not we probably have to avoid if they are too much bigger.

PoindexterOglethorpe

(26,727 posts)

3. This is in part why we have not found other intelligent species.

Reply to Judi Lynn (Original post)

Sat Dec 17, 2022, 01:24 AM

Dec 2022

They might live on a very different kind of planet, such as one which has even less dry land than ours does.

Or their planet might be covered with clouds of some kind (sort of like Venus, but not so hot) and so they have no idea what else is out there.

Or they might be on a planet like Europa, covered by ice, so again they never see the stars.

Or perhaps their vision is quite different from ours and, you guessed, it, never see the stars.

And that's not even thinking about the very distant chance that two civilizations would overlap in time and actually be close enough to make contact.

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