astronomers discovered nearby exoplanet This may be the first such world covered water.
TOI-1452 b is an Earth-mass exoplanet about 100 light-years away in the constellation Draco. in paper was published on Wednesday Journal of AstronomyUniversity of Montreal researchers find that the planet’s mass suggests it is composed mostly of something less dense than rock but denser than gas — a potential sign of a global ocean.
“TOI-1452 b is one of the best candidates for an ocean planet we’ve found so far,” University of Montreal PhD student in astrophysics Charles Cadieux said in the statement. “Its radius and mass suggest a much lower density than expected for a metal and rock planet like Earth.”
TOI-1452 b first caught the attention of astronomers via NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or Tess spacecraft. The Tess data suggested the existence of an exoplanet, but the observation was inconclusive.
TOI-1452 b orbits part of a binary star system, and TESS does not have the power to resolve individual stars in this system. The University’s Observatoire du Mont-Megantic (OMM) was able to confirm the existence of TOI-1452 b with new analytical techniques.
“The OMM was instrumental in confirming the nature of this signal and estimating the radius of the planet,” said Mr Cadieux. “This was not an ordinary inspection. “We had to be sure that the signal detected by TESS was indeed caused by an exoplanet orbiting TOI-1452, the largest of the two stars in this binary system.”
An instrument mounted on the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope in Hawaii then measured the planet’s mass.
Unlike Earth, a mostly rocky and metallic planet with about 70% water covering its surface, TOI-1452 b is mostly, but not entirely, water, with about 30% of its mass being liquid. It is a type of deep global ocean that is closer to the deep waters believed to lie beneath the icy crust of Saturn’s moon Enceladus than Earth’s oceans; water is less than 1% of the mass of our planet.
Exoplanets are located outside the solar system.
It’s still unclear whether TOI-1452 b is an ocean world, and what that might mean for the chances of discovering alien life in its waters, but the researchers note that The James Webb Space Telescope should soon be able to help penetrate the mystery of this strange new watery world.
