NEW: Scientists have detected water vapor and possibly even liquid water clouds that rain in the atmosphere of a strange exoplanet that lies in the habitable zone of its host star about 110 light-years from Earth.
"Most of that planet, by volume, the vast majority is this gas envelope," he said. As Benneke described, the planet is most likely some sort of core, potentially a rocky one, surrounded by a massive, hydrogen gas envelope that has some water vapor in it.
While these researchers found evidence for liquid water clouds on K2-18 b, because of its lack of surface, rain wouldn't pool on the planet. As rainfall travels through the thick gas surrounding the planet's core, it would become so warm that the water would evaporate back up into the clouds where it would condense and fall again, Benneke said.
Without a real surface, so to speak, landing on the planet would also be nearly impossible to land on, especially because the gas is so thick and has such an incredibly high pressure that any Earth-created spacecraft sent there would be destroyed.The birth of K2-18 b? Benneke suggests that, possibly, this planet formed by rock accreting immense amounts of gas,"like a vacuum cleaner," he said. This gas accretion would have more than doubled the planet's radius and increased its volume eightfold.
To come to these conclusions, the research team analyzed data from Hubble Space Telescope observations that they made between 2016 and 2017 of the K2-18 b planet passing in front of its star eight times. This technique allows scientists to detect distinct signatures of molecules like water in a planet's atmosphere.James Webb Space TelescopeThis type of research, Benneke said, is leading toward a final goal of"being able to study real, true Earth-like planets.
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