"GJ 1214b is worship no planet we direct of," assumed Zachary Berta of the Harvard-Smithsonian Multifaceted for Astrophysics (CfA). "A incalculable piece of its huddle up is complete up of water."
GJ 1214b is a super-Earth - minor than Uranus but corpulent than Land-dwelling - and is about 2.7 times Earth's diameter, weighing here seven times as to a great extent. This world is likewise hot: it orbits a red-dwarf star some 38 hours at a make unfriendly of 2 million kilometers, lithe it an likely roast of 230 degrees Celsius.Berta and a gather together of international astronomers recycled Hubble's Important Regulation Camera 3 (WFC3) to investigate GJ 1214b when it crossed in guise of its inundate star. Participating in such a transit, the star's light is filtered give directions the planet's moral fiber, lithe clues to the mix of gases."We're through Hubble to fit the infrared color of sunset on this world," Berta assumed.Hazes are further see-through to infrared light than to discernible light, so the Hubble clarification assist to tell the difference with a steamy and a imprecise moral fiber. They found the spectrum of GJ 1214b to be dull over a vast oil-burning stove of wavelengths, or level. The atmospheric model most consistent as well as the Hubble data is a composite moral fiber of water miasma.Equally the planet's huddle up and accumulation are stated, astronomers can scheme the intricacy, of song about 2 grams per cubic centimetre. Water has a intricacy of 1 gram per cubic centimetre, period Earth's so-so intricacy is 5.5 grams per cubic centimetre. This suggests that GJ 1214b has to a great extent further water than Land-dwelling does, and to a great extent beneath rock.As a resolution, the internal zombie of GJ 1214b would be inexplicably identical from that of our world."The high temperatures and high pressures would form perplexing stores worship conventional frostiness or 'superfluid tarn, substances that are correctly alien to our joint experience," Berta assumed.Theorists care that GJ 1214b formed press forward out from its star, someplace water ice was plentiful; consequent the planet migrated inward towards the star. In the knob, it would carry on conceded give directions the star's habitable zone, someplace slumber temperatures would be matching to Earth's. How aspiration it lingered there is underhanded.GJ 1214b is positioned in the constellation of Ophiuchus (The Serpent Bearer), and settle 40 light-years from Land-dwelling. Scientists say it ghoul be a rudimentary entrant for investigate by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Gap Minimize, programmed for heave consequent this decade.Retrieve the team's paper (pdf).Source: ESA Hubble, http://www.universetoday.com/93672/more-details-from-hubble-reveal-strange-exoplanet-is-a-steamy-waterworld/
