Water Worlds Around Other Stars Could Have Oceans 1000 Kilometers Deep
Back in 2015, the Kepler Space Telescope identified a weird world orbiting a red dwarf in the constellation of Leo, some 100 light years from Earth. K2-18b, as it was designated, has to do with 8 times more enormous than Earth with two times the radius, making it a kind of world astronomers call a mini-Neptune. It orbits its moms and dad star in simply 33 days, positioning it securely within the habitable zone, the area around a star where liquid water can exist.Accurate conditions on such a world are difficult to figure out. Astronomers can put limitations on what is possible and what isn't. Which's when they understood that K2-18b was far from common. Up until then, astronomers thought all worlds fell under the classification of gas giant, like Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune, or rocky body,...