Forty light years from Earth is a huge planet made mostly of water and surrounded by a dense vapor atmosphere. The composition of this strange world of water has been analyzed by a team of researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian using the Hubble Space Telescope or NASA.
This water planet, called GJ1214b, was discovered in 2009 and is the first known with these characteristics. "It's unlike any planet known so far," says Zachory Berta, author of the paper, "much of their mass is made of water." In addition, scientists have explained that due to high pressures and temperatures, this exoplanent could form such exotic materials hot as ice or water superfluid.
Scientists have used the time when GJ1214b crossed in front of its star since the light thereof, to be filtered through the atmosphere, can reveal the composition of the gases which contain it. The results, published in The Astrophysical Journal, have confirmed that the thick fog that covers the fog exoplanet was not simple, but water vapour.
The diameter of this water planet is nearly three times that of the Earth , and seven times its mass. Astronomers have estimated that this super-Earth has a density of about 2 grams per cubic centimeter,
much lower than that of Earth, indicating that GJ1214b much more water and less rocks on our planet.
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