Scientists say they found first potentially habitable planet with water in its skies
In the dim, red light of an alien sun, scientists have found the first evidence for water in the atmosphere of a rocky planet — offering a tantalizing new target in the search for life in the universe.
The intriguing world, which goes by the impersonal designation K2-18b, lies 110 light-years away in the constellation Leo. More important: It sits in its star’s “habitable zone,” where it is bathed in the right amount of warmth to allow for liquid water on its surface.
Twice as large as our own planet and eight times as massive, K2-18b possesses powerful gravity that would make it difficult to walk upon. It orbits close to a red dwarf star, much smaller and cooler than our sun. And aside from water vapor, its atmosphere contains mostly hydrogen gas — a molecule that makes up less than 1 part per million of our own atmosphere.
It is no “second Earth,” said astronomer Angelos Tsiaras, the lead author of a study on the planet published Wednesday in the journal Nature Astronomy, but “this is the best candidate for habitability that we know right now.”
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