14 DAY TRIAL // For the first time in history, an alien planet outside our solar system is proven to have water in its atmosphere. Previous theories said water vapor should be present in the atmospheres of nearly all the known extrasolar planets.
Curiously, water was thought to be found in the atmosphere of one of the giant's neighbors, but further studies dismissed the claim. The fact that the next planet to be analyzed really does contain water is a wonderful coincidence.
Astronomers used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to analyze two planets orbiting a star located around 63 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. At first they thought they discovered water on a planet known as HD 209458b, later dubbed Orion, but now they know it's not this one that has water, it's the neighboring HD 189733b.
The two planets are somewhat similar, but the latter is closer to its sun and boils at more than 1,300?F (700?C). The Jupiter-like planet only has water in the form of superheated Steam, as the temperatures are too high to allow liquid water to exist.
The detection of the presence of water vapor was possible because this planet, from the vantage point of the Earth, orbits directly in front of its star, allowing crucial measurements to be made. It is what is known as a transiting planet.
"We were expecting to have a non-negligible amount of water" on these planets based on theories of how hot Jupiters form, said lead author Giovanna Tinetti, a European Space Agency fellow at the Institute d'Astrophysique de Paris in France.
"It's quite exciting to see that theory and measurements are going in the same direction," she continued, although the scientists were a bit disappointed with the fact there's no possibility of the gas giant hosting alien lifeforms, since, as far as we know, no organisms could survive in those conditions.