These wet worlds would join the familiar rocky planets and gas giants in our neighborhood.
In recent years, astronomers have been rapidly detecting new planets orbiting stars beyond our own, called exoplanets. To date,have been discovered and confirmed. But figuring out exactly what those worlds look like—and therefore whether or not they might be habitable—from light years away is a difficult feat.
By that logic, “super Earths,” which were on the smaller side of that radius valley, were left with very thin atmospheres and a largely exposed rocky surface. “Mini-Neptunes,” on the other hand, had retained thick, puffy atmospheres and therefore these gassy planets had larger radii. But don’t start picturing a world with a rocky core and a deep ocean of water sloshing around on top of it, exposed to space, Luque says. “What we’ve seen in our sample is that this water cannot be on the surface,” he says. “The water may be trapped below the surface or maybe mixed with the magma, but it is not going to be in the form of deep, deep oceans–at least not at the surface.”
In the search for habitable worlds, astronomers typically use liquid water as a guide. That’s because it is essential for life as we know it .
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