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One third of the Earth is made up of liquid water

Astronomers discover exoplanet, may have life

By Many A-SunPublished about a year ago 4 min read
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Planets

To gain a deeper understanding of the universe and find a future second home for humanity, scientists have been exploring a wide variety of celestial bodies, using ground-based and space-based equipment such as the Hubble Telescope and the Chinese FAST eye to make discoveries.

As technology continues to evolve, scientists have been able to see objects hundreds of light years away, study distant black holes and pulsar phenomena, and more importantly, observe if there are planets similar to our Earth, and recently an international team of researchers led by the University of Montreal announced that they have discovered an ocean planet where life may exist.

Water is the source of all things, the first life on Earth is in the ocean evolution, Earth, and although the form and species of organisms are different, without exception, their internal biochemical reactions do not need the participation of water, some people may say, water bears such creatures can survive in several hundred degrees of high temperature, they do not need water?

Some microorganisms do not need oxygen, but not water. Water can maintain the energy reactions in the body on the one hand, and stabilize the temperature of the organism on the other.

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But at present, Earth is the only planet in the universe where life is known to exist, so in the search for extraterrestrial life, the primary condition is still the survival conditions of Earth organisms as a reference.

Water consists of hydrogen and oxygen, hydrogen is widely present in the universe, so water is not unique to Earth, there are many planets in the solar system that have large amounts of water, such as the back of the moon, where water ice and drifting comets have water ice cores, but this solid water is not conducive to biological reproduction, so our focus is still more on liquid water.

It is one of the moons of Jupiter, its diameter is about 5268 km, two-fifths of the Earth, although the volume is smaller than the Earth, its water content is about 26.5 times that of the Earth, but because Io is too far from the Sun, resulting in the surface in the extreme cold all year round, the temperature is only -163 ℃, so its liquid water deep below the surface, the thickness can reach hundreds of kilometers.

Although Io is rich in water, it does not have water on the surface and there are no planets in the entire solar system that are heavily covered by water, except for Earth, so scientists have looked outward to the exoplanets.

An international team led by Caddies, a P. D. student at the University of Montreal and a member of the Exoplanet Institute, has discovered a water-covered ocean planet through the TESS telescope: TOO-1452b, which is located in the northern constellation Myrmidon, just 100 light-years from Earth.

TOO-1452b belongs to a binary system, i.e., there are two stars in the system, TOO-1452 and TIC 420112587, which are both red dwarfs about 14.5 billion kilometers apart, twice the distance from the Sun to Pluto, and TOO-1452b revolves around TOO-1452, a red dwarf.

TOO-1452 is a faint star with only a quarter of the mass of the Sun, and the reaction rate of internal nuclear fusion will be slower than that of the Sun, so its surface temperature is only 2900°C, which is 2600°C lower than that of the Sun.

This means that TOO-1452b needs to be close enough to the star to get enough heat to maintain the surface temperature, and it does. It is only 9.12 million kilometers from the main star, and it takes only 11 days to revolve around the star for one week, a distance that just makes up for the defects of the main star and makes TOO-1452b habitable.

The team spent more than 50 hours confirming the exact data of TOO-1452b1 and finally confirmed that it is much larger than Earth, the planet is 70 percent larger but only five times the mass of Earth, and in terms of radius and mass, it is far less dense than a planet made of rocks and metals, only two possibilities could lead to this, one is that TOO-1452b is a gaseous planet, or it is a planet in which 30% of the entire planet is water.

If TOO-1452b is a gaseous planet, it is again too dense, so most of its mass should be composed of matter lighter than rock but heavier than gas, and the planet happens to be located in the habitable zone of the galaxy.

So after modeling the interior of TOO-1452b, the researchers concluded that the planet is about 30% liquid water, a veritable ocean planet, in contrast to the Earth, which is a relatively dry planet, with 70% of its surface covered by oceans, but only a small fraction of its mass: less than 1%.

As we said above, water is the source of all things, and with water, there is a possibility of life, so could there be an alien civilization on TOO-1452b?

Scientists are also eager to know this question, but nowadays it is difficult for telescopes to carefully observe exoplanets, and even exoplanet stars are just a point of light, although some of the most sophisticated spectrometers can analyze their atmospheric composition, and the metabolism of life produces some special substances, such as oxygen and methane, which leave traces in the atmosphere.

The Webb telescope is equipped with an advanced infrared spectrometer, and in the future, it is expected to analyze the atmospheric spectra of planets to find evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial life.

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Many A-Sun

Where your interests lie, that's where your abilities lie.

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