We May Have Just Detected an Elusive Ocean World Orbiting a Sun-Like Star
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Loading... - Andrea Ross
- 26 Apr 2023
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A rare world 245 light-years away could be key to unraveling a planetary mystery.
An exoplanet called TOI-733b is just under twice the radius of Earth, and is orbiting a star a little smaller than the Sun with a period of 4.9 days. Measurements of its density suggest that it may either have lost its atmosphere, or be an ocean-covered water world.
At such a close orbital proximity, heat from the star is likely to be evaporating TOI-733b's atmosphere – which means that, in relatively short order, it could transform into a small, naked rock.
This, according to a team of astronomers led by Iskra Georgieva of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, could help scientists figure out a curious gap in the exoplanet record: why there are so few worlds between 1.5 and 2 Earth radii.
The research, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics, is available on preprint server arXiv.
Since the first exoplanets were discovered in the 1990s, we've gone on to a sort of exoplanet discovery boom. At time of writing, over 5,300 exoplanets have been discovered and confirmed, along with thousands more candidates. All this means that we're able to start seeing some patterns emerge. Read More…
