An exoplanet that may be covered by a deep ocean and is about one hundred light years away from Earth has been discovered by researchers in the constellation Draco.
TOI-1452b, as it’s called, is a recently discovered exoplanet that is 70% larger than the Earth and is located in a “Goldilocks zone,” where temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist.
Astronomers believe that TOI-1452b could be covered completely by a thick layer of water, similar to some of Jupiter’s and Saturn’s moons and that is orbiting “a nearby visual-binary M dwarf” star.
The discovery was led by Dr. Charles Cadieux, a researcher at the University of Montreal, together with an international team of scientists after NASA’s TESS telescope, which has been operating since 2018, alerted them of the existence of the exoplanet.
According to Phys.org, Cadieux said, “TOI-1452b is one of the best candidates for an ocean planet that we have found to date…its radius and mass suggest a much lower density than what one would expect for a planet that is basically made up of metal and rock…like Earth.”
Exoplanet covered in ocean is assumed to be rocky like Earth
As soon as NASA’s new James Webb Telescope begins atmospheric characterization efforts, researchers believe more will be learned about the TOI-1452b exoplanet.
Depending on recent findings, scientists believe the exoplanet orbits a much smaller star than our sun and is probably rocky like Earth although with a much different mass, radius, and density.
Researchers further noted that further observations are needed in order to determine the exoplanet’s true nature, but “whether this is a rocky world or one with a volatile envelope, TOI-1452b is a unique system for studying exoplanets at the transition between super-Earths and mini-Neptunes.”
It’s also possible, however, that TOI-1452b is not an ocean planet. Researchers say it could also either be a bare-rock planet with an iron content less than half of the Earth’s or a terrestrial planet with a thin, low molecular weight atmosphere.
This discovery by Dr. Charles Cadieux and his international team of researchers was published in The Astronomical Journal.
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