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For the first time, water has been detected on an exoplanet orbiting in its star's habitable zone.
A new study by Professor Björn Benneke of the Institute for Research on Exoplanets at the Université de Montréal, his doctoral student Caroline Piaulet and several of their collaborators reports the detection of water vapour and perhaps even liquid water clouds in the atmosphere of the planet K2-18b.
The planet is nine times the mass of Earth and circling more closely to its smaller M3 dwarf star with, a year length of only 33 days. K2-18b "receives virtually the same amount of total radiation from its host star" as Earth.
Scientists currently believe that the thick gaseous envelope of K2-18b likely prevents life as we know it from existing on the planet's surface.
Still, according to Professor Benneke "This represents the biggest step yet taken towards our ultimate goal of finding life on other planets, of proving that we are not alone."
Journal Reference
Björn Benneke, Ian Wong, Caroline Piaulet, Heather A. Knutson, Ian J.M. Crossfield, Joshua Lothringer, Caroline V. Morley, Peter Gao, Thomas P. Greene, Courtney Dressing, Diana Dragomir, Andrew W. Howard, Peter R. McCullough, Eliza M.-R. Kempton Jonathan J. Fortney, Jonathan Fraine. Water Vapor on the Habitable-Zone Exoplanet K2-18b. Astronomical Journal (submitted), 2019 [link]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday September 13 2019, @02:10AM (2 children)
A whole planet covered in alcohol?... Sush, you'll wake up EF, you fool.
Or maybe the extract of Rosacea karlsbadensis rugo bark, aka thiotimoline?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 13 2019, @03:02AM (1 child)
No ethanol required. Just energetic events like lightening strikes along with H2, O2, and other compounds that could combine to generate OH-.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday September 15 2019, @09:54AM
You know what happens when you mix those two and light a match? Or an electric spark? Or other energetic event?
Me thinks water happens why quite high probability, it's the lowest free energy [khanacademy.org] of the two elements.
The reaction releases enough heat to go kaboom, and when the things go kaboom you can bet they are just waiting for a pretext to release a yuge amount of energy and become a more stable compound.
I thinks that the drop in the level of the uterus during the last weeks of pregnancy as the head of the fetus engages in the pelvis [lexico.com] can hardly be described as a strike.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford