The new planet discovered by NASA could be a “water world”

 is a giant exoplanet, located 100 light years from Earth, which would harbor a very deep ocean on its surface.

If confirmed, the object would be the first water world discovered in space.

Charles Cadier of the University of Montreal and his research team describe the discovery in The Astrophysical Journal .

“TOI-1452 b is one of the best ocean planet candidates we have found so far,” Cadier said.

TOI-1452 b , is located 100 light-years away in the Dragon (or Dragon) constellation, orbits, one of two small stars in a binary system.

While the planet orbits its star in just 11 days, the world is in the system’s so-called habitable zone.

This means that the temperature is within the limits that allow the existence of liquid water.
The star TOI-1452 is significantly smaller than our Sun and similar in size to its companion star in the binary system. The two are only 97 AU apart .

This is about two and a half times the distance between the Sun and Pluto.

The stars, identified as red dwarfs, are so close together that NASA ‘s TESS space telescope initially detected them as a single object whose light dims every 11 days as it passes by exoplanets.Based on this signal, astronomers suspect that it is an object 70% larger than Earth.

Thanks to a special camera at the  Mont-Mégantic observatory , it was possible to study it more closely and decode the signal.

This confirms to scientists that it is indeed an exoplanet, possibly with a lot of water. The Japanese team was also able to confirm this observation.

Cadier and his collaborators suspect that the planet may be completely covered in water, similar to some of the moons of Saturn or Jupiter, but its water is frozen, at least on the surface.

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