Water worlds” are incredibly common throughout the Milky Way galaxy, a new study suggests.
Midsize alien planets — those two to four times larger than Earth — tend to harbor huge amounts of water, according to the research. Indeed, some of these exotic worlds are probably up to 50 percent water by weight.
Data indicate that about 35 percent of all known exoplanets which are bigger than Earth should be water-rich.
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which launched in April, will likely find lots of these water worlds. And the agency’s $8.9 billion James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to lift off in 2021, may be able to characterize the atmospheres of some of these worlds, he said.
“It’s amazing to think that the enigmatic, intermediate-size exoplanets could be water worlds with vast amounts of water,” TESS Deputy Science Director Sara Seager, a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in the same statement.
(ATMC CRICOS CODE: 03013D)