Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Thursday September 12 2019, @09:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the airborne-life-forms? dept.

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]


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday September 13 2019, @03:25PM (1 child)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 13 2019, @03:25PM (#893685) Journal

    Doh! Not enough caffeine. proton-electron

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 13 2019, @03:58PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 13 2019, @03:58PM (#893711)

    maybe with the right "press" that doesnt rely on relativity we can make stabiler nucleons with s quarks or energetic proton and neutrons (deltas)?
    you know, instead of a "atom smasher", we can "somehow" coax them nucleons with a more "soft approach" into them so-called short lived states of matter that are observed in colliderz, we can expand the periodic table to include predators mini harpoon ^_^