Friday, February 2, 2007

Ocean Planets on the Brink of Detection

Over in super geekland - Physorg.com has an interesting article about the possibility of other water world existing. Even though we don't have an "active" water world (beside Earth) in our solar system it seems reasonable that somewhere within the billions of other planets that exists there must be some that are water worlds.

And I thought that was a movie with Kevin Costner!

The article makes an interesting point about Earth and that the water content on Earth is 1 part in 4400, yet it covers two-thirds of the surface. The theory of water planets encompasses many variations of its composition and they are not necessarily built like earth.

The article concludes that our current best shot at detecting water planets will come from the recent launch of CoRoT satellite.

Remember where there is water there is the best chance for life - at least as know it!

2 comments:

Joseph Hunkins said...

Interesting 1 in 4400 notion - I'd never thought of it that way. I like the idea that life is probably abundant throughout the universe. Unfortunately we live in a fairly remote area so it'll be hard to make contact until downloadable brains give us a kind of immortality and we can take longer trips.

"DadPuter, I have to go the the bathroom"
"We're almost there KidPuter - you only need to hold it another 500,000 years"

Glenn said...

Yes I wonder if that is why that SciFi show The 4400 was called that. There were 4400 people abudcted by aliens and returned to earth.

It will be like Douglas Adams's 42!