New analysis finds evidence for many exoplanets made of water and rock around small stars. Water is the one thing all life on Earth requires. Additionally, the cycle of rain to river to ocean to rain is an essential part of what maintains our planet’s stable and hospitable climate conditions. Plane
. With a larger sample size, scientists are better able to identify demographic patterns. This is similar to how looking at the population of an entire town can reveal trends that are hard to see at an individual level.
A new study suggests that many more planets in distant solar systems have large amounts of water than previously thought—as much as half water and half rock. The catch? It’s probably embedded underground, as in Jupiter’s moon Europa, above. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute “The two different ways to discover planets each give you different information,” said Pallé. By catching the shadow created when a planet crosses in front of its star, astronomers can determine the diameter of the planet. By measuring the tiny gravitational pull that a planet exerts on a star, astronomers can calculate its mass.
“I was shocked when I saw this analysis—I and a lot of people in the field assumed these were all dry, rocky planets.”The densities of a large percentage of the planets suggested that they were too light for their size to be made up of pure rock. Instead, these planets are probably something like half rock and half water, or another lighter molecule.
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