Astronomers Find Water on the Remnants of a Destroyed Planet

For the first fourth dimension ever , scientist have found existent chemic evidence of water on a bumpy target outside of our solar system . The water supply was n’t found on a planet , but rather the remains of one shredded to act by its buy the farm parent star .

The sopping smashed object is orbiting the ashen dwarf star GD61 170 about 150 light years away . The chunk of rock-and-roll , now technically an asteroid , came from a very small minor - planet measuring anywhere from about 56 mile ( 90 km ) to 355 naut mi ( 570 klick ) across . In all likelihood , the minor - planet would have been like in size toVesta , our solar system ’s second large asteroid ( or second heavy minor - planet depending on your persuasion — cere being the largest ) .

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But 200 million geezerhood ago , its host star , GD61 , entered into its death throe , engorging into a cerise giant , and then lose its stunned layers of gases to expose its heavy nucleus , thus get back into its current snowy gnome res publica .

During this sentence , the water - rich small planet was criticise out of its regular orbit and cast into one so tight with its asterisk that the gravitational forces caused it to break up . The resulting remnants are now orbiting the clean dwarf — and they were lately detected by scientist using the Hubble Space Telescope and the large Keck telescope in Hawaii .

Soaking Wet

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More interesting than that , however , is the chemic composition of the object . It has redundant amounts of oxygen , an reading that the planet it came from must have been composed of 26 % water by mass . That ’s rather extreme when you consider that the Earth is composed of only 0.023 % water supply by hatful . To make this determination , the researchers used ultraviolet spectroscopy information drawn from the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph aboard Hubble .

This is exciting news for astrobiologists who speculate about thepotential for habitabilityand living on other major planet . For the first time ever , astronomers have detected water on a mundane exoplanet — a former one at that . Prior to this discovery , we ’ve only had grounds of water outside our solar organisation in the atmospheres of gas giants .

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What ’s more , it ’s substantiation that water can subsist on planets long after they ’ve been destroyed by their stars .

Prior to this discovery , scientist have observe a dozen destroyed exoplanets orbiting white dwarfs — but this is the first time the touch of water has been found .

Read the entire subject field in Science : “ grounds for Water in the Rocky Debris of a Disrupted Extrasolar Minor Planet . ”

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