[ad_1]
Water detected
Detecting liquid water on exoplanets is an important problem, as it suggests that they could harbor life – and the more we see aquatic worlds, the more we can confirm that we are not alone in the universe.
Now, a team of researchers from the Exoplanet Research Institute of the Université de Montréal has detected the water vapor in the atmosphere of an exoplanet nine times greater than its terrestrial mass and 111 light-years of the earth.
Rainy planet
A summary of the team's findings, based on data collected by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, was released this week as a pre-print.
The planet, named K2-18b and discovered by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope in 2015, is as far from its star as the Earth is from the Sun, which means it receives a similar amount of energy. Along with the climate models developed by the team from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope data, water vapor can potentially form clouds of liquid water in the planet's atmosphere and rush from its sky under form of rain.
Ultimate goal
Scientists do not know if life will be able to survive on K2-18b, but they welcome this discovery as a breakthrough.
"This is the biggest step towards our ultimate goal: to find life on other planets, to prove that we are not alone," said Björn Benneke, senior author and professor at the Université de Montréal. "Through our observations and our climate model of this planet, we have shown that its water vapor can condense into liquid water. It's a first.
READ MORE: Water detected on an exoplanet located in the habitable zone of its star [University of Montreal]
More on exoplanets: NASA has released an amazing map of all known exoplanets
[ad_2]
Source link