While we’ve discovered more than 5,000 exoplanets, most of the information we have is about them planets Simple enough, researchers usually know a planet’s mass or radius and its distance from its host star, but a little more, which makes it difficult to predict what these worlds really look like.
However, new tools and technologies are allowing researchers to learn more about details such as the planet’s density, enabling a better understanding of what these places look like.
More recently, researchers using data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope identified two planets that appear to be aquatic worlds, with oceans 500 times deeper than Earth’s, Digitartlends reported.
The planets Kepler-138c and Kepler-138d were first identified by the Kepler Space Telescope in 2014, but it was only recently that data from Hubble and Spitzer were used to reveal their densities.
Research shows that up to half the size of planets may be composed of water, which raises questions about planets of this size and type.
“These two planets, Kepler-138 and c and d, are very different in nature and a large part of their entire volume is probably made up of water,” said one of the researchers, Björn Benneke of the University of Montreal team. it’s the best evidence for aquatic worlds, which are a type of planet.” Astronomers have speculated about its existence for a long time.
To visualize what these watery worlds are like, experts say we should think not of any of the planets in our solar system, but of some of their moons.
“Imagine larger versions of Europa or Enceladus, the water-rich moons that orbit Jupiter and Saturn, but get very close to their star,” said lead author Caroline Piaulet of the Trottier Institute for Exoplanet Research. would have large envelopes of water vapor.”
However, these planets would not really be similar anywhere in our solar system because the planets in question have very hot atmospheres. Instead they probably have a dense vapor atmosphere with high pressure liquid water.
While this seems unusual, we could find more similar worlds in the future, Beneke said: ‘As our instruments and technologies become sensitive enough to find and study planets far from their stars, we could start to find many of these worlds. aquatic”.
