Water on Exoplanets!!

[Dr. Spitzer]

Check out what Spitzer had just released:

 

"A scorching-hot gas planet beyond our solar system is steaming up with water vapor, according to new observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

 

The planet, called HD 189733b, swelters as it zips closely around its star every two days or so. Astronomers had predicted that planets of this class, termed "hot Jupiters," would contain water vapor in their atmospheres. Yet finding solid evidence for this has been slippery. These latest data are the most convincing yet that hot Jupiters are "wet."

 

"We're thrilled to have identified clear signs of water on a planet that is trillions of miles away," said Giovanna Tinetti, a European Space Agency fellow at the Institute d'Astrophysique de Paris in France. " Tinetti is lead author of a paper on HD 189733b appearing today in Nature.

 

Although water is an essential ingredient to life as we know it, wet, hot Jupiters are not likely to harbor any creatures. Previous measurements from Spitzer indicate that HD 189733b is a fiery 1,000 Kelvin (1,340 degrees Fahrenheit) on average. Ultimately, astronomers hope to use instruments like those on Spitzer to find water on rocky, habitable planets like Earth."

 

For the rest see http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2007-12/release.shtml

 

Cool huh? do you think that many planets have water?

[Sisyphus]

Yes, it's cool, but what would really be a good find would be liquid water, with it's possibility of life. That is what is rare.

[kanzure]

What environments are conducive to the construction of water in particular? Is there any statistical likelihood that there are large bodies of water in interstellar space? Sorry to hijack the thread.

 

- Bryan

[h4tt3n]

What really wonders me in the above case is: why hasn't the water gone missing a long time ago due to photolysis? If the planet is close enough to it's host sun to obtain a 2 day orbital period, then it must be exposed to a massive radiation including ultraviolet light, which is capable of separating water into hydrogen and oxygen.

Of course Oxygen and hydrogen could be "recycled" within the atmosphere and form water after the separation, but even the gravity of a jupiter-like planet wouldn't be able to hold back free H at a surface temperature of 1.300 degrees farenheit. (Is water even stable at this temperature?)

 

So... Why isn't this planet bone dry?

 

Even our own earth will face certain drought due to photolysis when the sun has increased it's radiation to about twice what it is today. The HD 189733b case seems far more extreme than this scenario, but still there is plenty of water at hand...