'Super-Earths' May Have Stable Oceans That Are Key For Alien Life

Excerpt from
huffingtonpost.com


NASA’s Kepler space telescope celebrated its 1,000th exoplanet discovery earlier this month, an impressive milestone in the search for life on other worlds. 

Now astronomers are homing in on those exoplanets that may have liquid water,

which is thought to be essential for supporting life. And according to

new research, so-called “super-Earths” may host vast oceans that last

for billions of years. 

A super-Earth is an extrasolar planet whose mass is greater than Earth’s but smaller than that of gas giants like Neptune and Uranus.

Earth’s mantle holds vast amounts of water, which returns to to the

surface through volcanism. Since this “recycling” process is crucial for

maintaining our planet’s oceans, researchers from the

Harvard-Smithsonian Center For Astronomy (CfA) wondered if a similar

process might occur on super-Earths.

The researchers used computer simulations on various super-Earths to find out how long it would take oceans to form on them, and whether the oceans could be sustained.

What did they find? Super-Earths between two and four times Earth’s mass

seem to be even better than Earth at establishing and maintaining

oceans. In fact, the water on these planets could last for at least 10

billion years, the research suggested.

The findings were presented in Seattle on Jan. 8 at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

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'Super-Earths' May Have Stable Oceans That Are Key For Alien Life