An international team of researchers led by Charles Cadieux, a Ph.D. student at the Université de Montréal and member of the Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx), has announced the […]
Ocean world
Posted inIcy Worlds, Mimas, Press Release
Evidence For An Internal Ocean On Mimas
A Southwest Research Institute scientist set out to prove that the tiny, innermost moon of Saturn was a frozen inert satellite and instead discovered compelling evidence that Mimas has a […]
Posted inHabitable Zones
Mass-radius Relationships For Irradiated Ocean Planets
Massive and water-rich planets should be ubiquitous in the universe. Many of those worlds are expected to be subject to important irradiation from their host star, and display supercritical water […]
Posted inHabitable Zones, Press Release
Salty Oceans in Low Mass Habitable Planets and Global Climate Evolution
The available models of global climate evolution in habitable earthlike planets do not consider the effect of salt content in oceans, which affects water evaporation. Two distinct categories of such […]
Posted inHabitable Zones, Press Release
Irradiated Ocean Planets Bridge Super-Earth And Sub-Neptune Populations
With radii ranging between those of the Earth (1 Rearth) and Neptune (~3.9 Rearth), small planets constitute more than half of the inventory of the 4000-plus exoplanets discovered so far. […]
Posted inHabitable Zones
Runaway Climate Cooling Of Ocean Planets In The Habitable Zone
Terrestrial planets covered globally with thick oceans (termed ocean planets) in the habitable zone were previously inferred to have extremely hot climates in most cases. This is because H2O high-pressure […]
Posted inPress Release, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
A New Desalination Pump Help Define the pH of Ocean Worlds
We study ocean exoplanets, for which the global surface ocean is separated from the rocky interior by a high-pressure ice mantle. We describe a mechanism that can pump salts out […]
Posted inHabitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Pluto, Press Release, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
Could There Be Life In Pluto's Ocean?
Pluto is thought to possess a subsurface ocean, which is not so much a sign of water as it is a tremendous clue that other dwarf planets in deep space […]
Posted inAstrogeology, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Europa, Icy Worlds, Press Release, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
Europa’s Ocean May Have An Earthlike Chemical Balance
A new NASA study modeling conditions in the ocean of Jupiter’s moon Europa suggests that the necessary balance of chemical energy for life could exist there, even if the moon […]