Astronomers discover potential “water world” planet nearby Earth

The “super-Earth” planet, also known as the “Water World,” has been found nearby, according to scientists (astronomers), and it may be able to host life.

The new ocean planet has been discovered orbiting a red dwarf in a binary star system 100 light-years away from Earth.

The newly discovered exoplanet is known as TOI-1452 b.

A team lead by the University of Montreal has characterized it as perhaps rocky like Earth, but bigger, using images from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and ground-based telescopes.

Even though TOI-1452 b has been predicted to be around 70% larger than Earth and nearly five times as massive, which would be compatible with having a very deep ocean, scientists claim that additional research is still needed.

It’s also possible that the planet is a massive rock with little to no atmosphere. It may even be a rocky planet with a hydrogen and helium-rich atmosphere.

If TOI-1452 b were shown to be an ocean world, that ocean could be quite deep indeed. While Earth’s surface is 70% water, our sea of blue makes up less than 1% of Earth’s mass. One simulation of TOI-1452 b, created by computer modeling specialists on the discovery team, showed that water could make up as much as 30% of its mass.

That proportion is comparable to watery moons in our solar system – Jupiter’s Ganymede and Callisto, or Saturn’s Titan and Enceladus – believed to hide deep oceans under shells of ice.

A year on TOI-1452 b takes just 11 days, but it gets a similar amount of light from its smaller, cooler star as Venus does from the sun. Despite its close orbit, it’s located in the “habitable zone,” meaning it could have highly-coveted liquid water on its surface.