The Search for Life Is Over | Incredible Discovery on Exoplanet Gliese 1214b

 

Water is the driving force of all nature this famous quote was conceived inside the mind of one of the most brilliant thinkers in all of humanity the Leonardo da Vinci may not have truly understood the complexity of the cosmos he and many other brilliant minds understood that water was paramount for the existence of life thanks to modern advancements in technology we have been able to pinpoint planets outside of our solar system that we know for sure contain the substance required for the creation of life life as we understand it

 cannot survive without water

 so the places where we find these

 streaks are probably presently habitable welcome to fact nominal today we will take a deep dive into the super earth Gliese 1214b a planet many have dubbed the water world the ingredients for life ever since the theoretical discovery in the 1970s that confirmed that there was a high possibility of liquid water in planets outside of our solar system our species has sought to find the possibility of life somewhere out there although the surface of a planet may be covered in water ice it is possible that the radioactive decay inside its core may allow for liquid water deeper in the planet strata and though our understanding of the mechanism at play in the universe has exponentially grown since the 1970s there is still the one true question left to answer are we truly alone in the vast universe or communicate with them so the question i have is are we alone are there other

 intelligent life forms in the universe given the size of the galaxies and size of the space how could we not feel how could we possibly be alone there has to be many many out there so i guess the real question is should we try to search out and communicate with these species we now understand that simply containing liquid water is not enough for life to develop from the raw and abundant elements that make up the foundation of life if an exoplanet were to form life we need the presence of liquid water and it must orbit somewhere in the goldilocks zones this is a very specific range of distance that a planet must be from its host star in order to have the perfect conditions for life to emerge since the solar system is in thermal equilibrium there's a well-defined distance away from a star where the temperature would be such that liquid water can exist all the way from just below boiling point on the one hand to just above freezing point in the other hand while we have found dozens of planets out that perfectly fit this description one of the strangest we've ever discovered is the infamous Gliese 1214b a super earth Gliese 1214b was discovered in 2009 by Canadian astronomer David Charbonneau and his team in the me earth project it is located inside the Ophiuchus constellation named after the greek expression for "snake holder" it's roughly 42 light years away from our sun and according to nasa has the size of 8.17 earths the astronomers running the project noticed that the star Gliese 1214b appeared to show drops in brightness they then observed the star more closely and confirmed that it dimmed by roughly 1.5 every 1.58 days follow-up radial velocity measurements were then made with the harp spectrograph on the eso's 3.6 meter telescope at la sija chile those measurements succeeded in providing independent evidence for the existence of this water world six times as massive as earth Gliese 1214b is less than three times as wide falling between the earth and the solar system's ice giants Uranus and Neptune in size though we know that there are other planets out there with vast seas there are some

 unique features that make Gliese 1214b stand out from its aquatic counterparts for one this exoplanet is primarily composed of water unlike earth whose water composition is a mere 0.025 percent of its mass Gliese 1214b has an unprecedented water composition of 10 percent and through further studies many experts have concluded that the planet is roughly 75 water and ice and only 25 rock it is hard to tell exactly how much water ice and vapor this planet is composed of because the atmosphere is very similar to its surface unlike terrestrial planets Gliese 1214b does not have a solid surface making the height of the atmosphere difficult to define instead atmospheric scientists introduced a concept called the scale height which determines the height of the atmosphere by changes in the increase or decrease of atmospheric pressure on earth the scale height is about 6 miles or 10 kilometers for comparison Gliese 1214b is three times deeper according to Norio Narita of the national astronomical observatory in japan a study was published showing the spectrum to be largely featureless over the wavelength range of 750 to 1000 nanometers because a thick and cloud-free hydrogen atmosphere would have produced detectable spectral features such an atmosphere appears to be ruled out although no clear signs were observed of water vapor the authors of the study believe that gaseous water is the primary component of this planet's atmosphere but further observations are necessary to make a definite conclusion narito also concluded that life on this planet may be impossible because of the proximity to its star Gliese 1214 this host's star is quite average all things considered in fact it has only 20 percent of the diameter of our sun roughly 15.7 percent of its mass and it's over 300 times dimmer but what has caught astronomers attention is the celestial dance between the two dancing with the star another interesting fact about Gliese 1214b is its rather unorthodox orbit the orbit eccentricity is relatively high compared to earth meaning the point in the orbit that it's closest to its star known as perihelion is about twice as close than when it's at its furthest point or aphelion this cosmic tango takes Gliese 1214b roughly 36 hours to complete one orbit around its host star though star Gliese is much smaller than our sun the fact that planet Gliese 1214bis orbiting it so close means that its surface is scorching hot it is comparable to the surface of Venus which can reach a whopping temperature of 393 kelvin or 248 degrees Fahrenheit though its outer layers may be a mystery at this point what is even more baffling to veteran astronomers all over the world is the mechanisms in its inner layers the distance from the surface of this planet to the seabed is estimated to be somewhere around 9 300 miles or 15 000 kilometers for perspective the deepest part of our ocean is in the Mariana Trench located approximately 124 miles east of the Mariana islands in the pacific ocean it is a mere 7 miles in depth or around 11 kilometers this means that Gliese 1214b is nearly 145 times deeper than our deepest ocean on earth hang with me it gets even crazier not only does the pressure skyrocket as you go deeper towards Gliese 1214b's core but the atmosphere also produces a strange ice one you wouldn't find at your local grocery store this type of ice is so dense and cold that scientists have an entirely new label for it and unlike conventional ice it is a crystalline form of water that exists under immense pressure of over 30 000 atmospheres in fact the pressure is so high in this water world that the liquid water itself is not the usual h2o you're used to seeing it is so thick heavy and hot that it is classified as plasma water the weather on this planet appears to be extreme due to the proximity to its host star and the incredible atmospheric pressure in the many layers of Gliese 1214b scientists believe that there is a perpetual storm raging on its surface with the liquid water boiling the vapor created is highly pressurized which create huge storms like the one we have never seen on earth with the insane amount of pressure on this planet it is safe to say that unless our technology takes a giant leap we won't be able to surf this strange sea below the surface the core of the planet is also quite interesting because it seems to be surrounded by a cryosphere just outside the inner layer though it's not one hundred percent completely understood scientists believe that the fact that ice so heavy 650 kilos per cubic meter to be precise that it settles at the bottom of the ocean and though the temperatures are extreme near the center of the planet ice is unable to melt because of its unprecedented pressure when this water planet was first discovered there was speculation that perhaps there was a slight possibility of life somewhere within its layers but experts as of late have come to terms with the fact that the intense atmospheric conditions coupled with a lack of diverse life-building elements make it highly unlikely that there is was or ever will be life on Gliese 1214b thank you guys so much for sticking around until the end if you learned something new be sure to smash the like button and subscribe to our channel for more articles like this and as always thanks for reading