Facts
Scientists Discover A ‘Super Earth’ With Water 110 Light-Years Away In World-First Discovery
It has shorter years as it completes an orbit in 33 days!
For the first time, scientists have discovered a planet outside of the solar system –home of water. Perceived as a major breakthrough in the hunt for the Habitat world, water vapour has been discovered on Super-Earth 110 light-years away, estimated to be twice the size of Earth and eight times its mass.
A computer-generated image released by UCL researchers suggest what the potentially-habitable planet looks like
Called K2-18b, the home of water also has an atmosphere and an accurate temperature range for any living things, Scientists at the University of London revealed. Closer to its star than to how the Earth is to the sun, the planet has shorter years as it completes its orbit in 33 days, while the Earth takes 365 days.
Before now, the exo-planet was firstly spotted 4years ago by NASA’s Kepler Spacecraft, but the result of the analysis carried out shows information that has not been seen before. A previous device used is only able to detect basic factors that include how far away the planet is, its surface temperature and its mass.
Researchers hope that newer technology, such as the James Webb Space Telescope due to launch on March 2021, will be able to unlock more secrets
Presently, a sophisticated tool that was developed at UCL has translated information from the Hubble Space Telescope to give the meaning of the unique molecular signatures of the water vapour.
Specifically, the planet is quite far away for astronomers to see. It can only be seen when starlight is filtered through the planet’s atmosphere as it moves around the sun, titled K2-18. The existence of water vapour in the planet’s atmosphere suggests it might be a rocky world or perhaps be an icy one with lots of water inside of it.
The vast telescope, which cost more than $7 billion (£5 billion), is considered a successor to the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope
However, several exoplanets like this have been tagged as gas giants, thus the K2-18b offers a valuable opportunity for scientists to study rocky, icy and smaller planets.
Time-lapse for the world’s biggest space telescope
