Ever since we\u2019ve gazed at the sky with scientific curiosity, a question has haunted us: Is Earth the only world with water in the universe? The answer, until recently, seemed to hide far beyond the reach of our telescopes. Even with advances like Hubble and Spitzer, detecting water on planets light-years away seemed nearly impossible. But\u2026 science loves to surprise. And now, a new study has just made global headlines. Using data from two NASA missions, astronomers have found evidence of a type of planet that, until now, existed more theoretically than in practice: worlds covered in water. Most intriguingly, these worlds are unlike anything we have in our cosmic backyard, and the story behind this discovery is worthy of a movie.<\/p>\n
Astronomers thought they knew super-Earths \u2014 until water turned the rules upside down<\/p>\n
For decades, the \u201csuper-Earth\u201d category dominated astronomers\u2019 imaginations. After all, they were seen as turbocharged versions of our planet: more mass, more rock, more metal, and no major surprises. But science sometimes needs a push to abandon old certainties. That\u2019s exactly what happened when a group of researchers decided to reanalyze data from a planetary system 218 light-years away, in the constellation Lyra\u2026<\/p>\n
The exact location was the Kepler-138 system, and within it, two planets in particular caught their attention: Kepler-138c and Kepler-138d. When comparing size and mass, something didn\u2019t quite match the expected pattern. They were large (three times the volume of Earth), relatively heavy (twice Earth\u2019s mass), but with a density much lower than compact rocks would allow. This means that a significant portion of the planet is made of something lighter than rock and heavier than gas.<\/p>\n
Two cosmic twins defy expectations<\/p>\n
And then, when redesigning the model of the two planets, scientists realized they were dealing with cosmic twins: virtually identical in size and mass, orbiting the same red dwarf star. It\u2019s as if they were two supersized Europas (Jupiter\u2019s moon), but placed much closer to the local \u201cSun.\u201d Some of the possible scenarios they came up with were:<\/p>\n
Dense vapor atmosphere: Temperatures above the boiling point would keep water in a gaseous state.
\nLiquid water under pressure: Just below this layer, colossal pressures could keep water liquid.
\nSupercritical phase: At extreme depths, water could exist in a hybrid state between liquid and gas, something that only occurs under very specific conditions.<\/p>\n
The most curious thing is that these two worlds are not in the so-called \u201chabitable zone,\u201d that is, the range in which the temperature would allow oceans on the surface of a rocky planet. Therefore, we are not talking about destinations ripe for life as we know it. It\u2019s worth remembering that it wasn\u2019t only there that scientists found water outside of Earth; recently, another place, not the moon, revealed huge ice oceans<\/a>.<\/p>\n A hidden planet hints at a universe full of water worlds<\/p>\n Not stopping there, while analyzing data collected by Hubble and Spitzer between 2014 and 2016, researchers found another clue: a fourth planet in the system, dubbed Kepler-138e. This one is in the habitable zone. The problem is that it doesn\u2019t appear to transit in front of the star relative to our line of sight. Without the transit, it\u2019s impossible to accurately measure its diameter, and without it, it\u2019s impossible to say whether it\u2019s rocky, gaseous, or perhaps another water world.<\/p>\n This type of discovery becomes very important because each time we find potentially aquatic worlds, even outside the habitable zone, we learn more about how water and atmosphere interact under different conditions. And, as our instruments advance, we may discover that \u201cocean worlds\u201d are much more common than we thought. It\u2019s no wonder NASA discovered the first \u201cwater world\u201d in history<\/a>, which is 30% made of oceans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ever since we\u2019ve gazed at the sky with scientific curiosity, a question has haunted us: Is Earth the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,285],"class_list":["post-90084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}