Water found on potentially habitable exoplanet

[phinds]

TL;DR Summary

water found on potentially habitable exoplanet

Summary: water found on potentially habitable exoplanet

from the BBC

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49648746

 

[trurle]

Preprints are available on arxiv

https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.05218
https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.04642

 

[hilbert2]

That planet probably has a higher air pressure than Earth, and has no oxygen in the atmosphere (it was mentioned somewhere that there are significant amounts of hydrogen there, so no oxygen, except trace amounts, is possible at same time).

 

[trurle]

That planet probably has a higher air pressure than Earth, and has no oxygen in the atmosphere (it was mentioned somewhere that there are significant amounts of hydrogen there, so no oxygen, except trace amounts, is possible at same time).

Actually it is yet unknown. Water+Hydrogen models had better fit than Water+Nitrogen, but the difference is not significant.

 

[kimbyd]

Sounds neat, but as the article in the OP mentions, this one is not a good candidate for finding extraterrestrial life.

Even if it did have a rocky surface and relatively thin atmosphere (as opposed to the Neptune-like planet many scientists apparently think it is), 50% water vapor in the atmosphere sounds to me like the result of a runaway greenhouse effect, which would also make the planet utterly uninhabitable.

I find this mostly interesting for demonstrating potential in detecting water around other planets. Hopefully over time the sensitivity will increase significantly to the point that even small amounts of water vapor are detectable.

 

[mfb]

If Hubble can do this, imagine what JWST and the next generation of Earth-based telescopes will be able to do (although water is difficult for Earth-based telescopes).

 

[stefan r]

That planet probably has a higher air pressure than Earth, and has no oxygen in the atmosphere (it was mentioned somewhere that there are significant amounts of hydrogen there, so no oxygen, except trace amounts, is possible at same time).

Water contains oxygen. :)

Free oxygen gas is not likely to be mixed with hydrogen gas. Oxygen is hostile to the early life that evolved on Earth. The planets located in habitable zones get attention because researchers are looking for life.

My impression from the article was that they detected water vapor. They said they assumed water would condense into clouds. They also did not specify if the gas was hydrogen or helium. They used the term H/He. The planet's mass is close to the range where hydrogen could escape faster than helium.

 

[nuuskur]

Can't wait till we hear about discoveries made with the James Webb telescope

 

[trurle]

Recent papers reported water on WASP-43b and WASP-79b too.
arXiv:1911.03358
arXiv:1911.02051