A new study has emerged that suggests that many more planets may contain larger amounts of water than previously thought, as much as half water and half rock. But, here’s the catch! All that water is most likely embedded in rock, rather than flowing on the surface as oceans or rivers.
“It was surprising to see evidence of so many water worlds orbiting the most common type of star in the galaxy,” said Raphael Luc, first author of the new paper and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago. This has huge implications for the search for habitable planets. Huh.”
With the help of better telescope equipment, scientists are discovering more and more signals planets In distant solar systems, even though a large sample size helps scientists identify demographic patterns, it is the same way that looking at entire city populations can reveal trends that are difficult to see on an individual level. Is.
Luc, along with co-author Enrique Paley of the Institute of Astrophysics in the Canary Islands and the University of La Laguna, decided to take a population-level look at a group of planets that are observed around a type of star called M. Yes – Dwarf man. These stars are the most common stars we see in the Milky Way around us, and scientists have cataloged dozens of planets around them, the news agency said. ANI The report said.
However, since stars are so much brighter than their planets, actual planets are not visible, instead, scientists detect faint signs of planetary effects on their stars—when a planet passes in front of its star. , or tug on the motion of a star as small as a planet’s orbit and means that many questions remain about what these planets actually look like. ANI report good.
“Two different ways of searching for planets give you different information,” Palle said. By capturing the shadow formed when a planet passes in front of its star, scientists can find the diameter of the planet. By measuring the small gravitational pull exerted by a planet on a star, scientists can determine its mass. By combining both measurements, scientists can estimate the composition of the planet. Perhaps it is a large-but-windy planet composed mostly of gas, like Jupiter, or a small, dense, rocky planet like Earth.
These analyzes were performed for individual planets, but rarely for the entire known population of such planets in the Milky Way. As scientists looked at the numbers – 43 planets in total – they saw a surprising picture emerging. The density of a large percentage of the planets suggested that they were too light for their size to be composed of pure rock. Instead, the planet is probably something like half rock and half water, or some other lighter molecule.
(with inputs from ANI)
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