Tag: water world

Earth’s Nearest Exoplanet, Proxima Centauri b, May Be a Water World Too

Earth’s Nearest Exoplanet, Proxima Centauri b, May Be a Water World Too

In August, the European Southern Observatory announced the discovery of an Earth sized planet orbiting in the habitable, or Goldilocks Zone, of the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri. Given its location just 4.22 light years away, the newfound world is as close to Earth as a potentially life-supporting planet could plausibly be, raising interesting philosophical […]

Posted in: Exo Planets
Now Even Pluto May Be Harboring A Subsurface Ocean

Now Even Pluto May Be Harboring A Subsurface Ocean

A new study of Pluto’s massive chasms strongly suggests that the former planet is concealing a liquid water ocean beneath its bizarre and wildly varying surface. From the abstract in Geophysical Research Letters: The New Horizons spacecraft has found evidence for geologic activity on the surface of Pluto, including extensional tectonic deformation of its water […]

Posted in: Outer Planets
So Many Seas to Sail

So Many Seas to Sail

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, working with the European Space agency’s Herschel Space Observatory has announced the discovery of large concentrations of comets in two solar systems relatively close to our own.  With both systems likely to contain rocky planets,  the presence of so many water bearing comets, at a concentration 10 times greater than found in our own solar system,  […]

Posted in: Space Science
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