Mysterious water worlds could be hiding alien life, say scientists as pool of ‘potentially habitable’ planets grows
THE discovery of secret water worlds has significantly widened the pool of “potentially habitable” planets, according to new research.
It poses exciting possibilities for finding life elsewhere in the universe.
“If you looked at the exoplanet community three to five years ago, everybody was thinking that [water] can only be present on the surface of planets,” Caroline Dorn, a geophysicist at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, who led new research in exoplanet interiors, told Ars Technica.
Scientists now believe that there are more water-rich exoplanets than assumed.
A University College London study, published in 2020, argued that Earth’s core could host up to 37 times more water than all the surface oceans combined.
And if that’s the case for Earth, it could be the case for an infinite number of other planets.
Models based on Earth’s composition have been used to make assumptions about planets all over the universe.
Even with the most advanced instruments, including the $10billion James Webb Telescope, scientists can only estimate a planet’s water content.
But traditional mass-radius diagrams, which are used to understand what a planet is made of, may underestimate water content by up to ten times if the solubility and distribution of water are not considered, according to Dorn’s research.
Larger planets with intense pressure conditions may have more water in their core, as water clings to iron droplets within internal magma.
Some of the water rises to the surface, forming oceans, but most of it can sink down to form the core, Dorn’s team discovered.
This means planets that are deemed inhabitable because they have ‘too much’ water might not be lost causes at all.
For some water worlds may actually be storing most of their H2O in their core, but humans and all our tools are simply too far away or not advanced enough to realise.
Liquid water is an essential requirement for life on Earth, so there is a general understanding that it could help breed life on other planets.
Though finding evidence of life on one of these water worlds still proves difficult.
Fermi Paradox – what is it?
Here's what you need to know...
- The Fermi Paradox isn’t strict evidence for alien life – but more of a thought experiment
- It’s a famous contradiction posed by physicist Enrico Fermi
- Fermi suggested that the enormous size of the universe – and the billions of Sun-like stars in the galaxy, and their planets – makes it highly likely that there is intelligent life out there
- Some of these civilisations may have developed interstellar travel
- But Fermi also noted that there’s a significant lack of evidence for life on other planets
- The chances of aliens being able to reach us are high, but there’s no evidence that aliens ever have
- This paradox has baffled scientists for decades