NASA has just announced that, by using the Hubble Space Telescope, that it has found a completely new kind of extrasolar planet: a 'super-Earth' that is mostly water. Discovered in 2009 and orbiting a star 40 light years away in the constellation Ophiuchus, the planet, called GJ 1214b, has only recently had its secrets unveiled thanks to new observations by Hubble.
By observing the planet as it transited its parent star, scientists wee able to conform that the atmosphere was mostly water. In addition to its watery atmosphere, another piece of evidence strongly hints at the fact that GJ 1214b is a water world: its density is around 2 grams per cubic centimeter. In comparison, Earth's density is 5.5 grams while water's is 1. Implication: the planet, when viewed in light of its watery atmosphere, may be mostly water.
However, there are some serious mysteries here, too.
First of all, the planet orbits close to its star, completing 1 circuit in a mere 38 hours at a distance of about 1.2 million miles. In comparison, on average, Mercury, the innermost planet, is over 30 million miles distant from the Sun. Being so close to its parent star, a red dwarf, the planet's temperature has been measured at over 400 degrees Fahrenheit, far too hot for life as we know it to exist. Another problem: this should be too hot for water, too.
Currently, the dominant theory as to how water can exist at such an extreme temperature is one that states that the planet formed farther out from its star as an ice world, much like Jovian moon Europa, migrating inwards for unknown reasons after its formation. On a smaller scale, ice can exist, albeit briefly, in a hot oven. Perhaps we are witnessing the brief liquid stage before the planet gets so hot all water evaporates.
Still, in a universe of diamond planets and worlds orbiting multiple stars, this water world is unique in that, so far, it is the only such planet known to science.
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