LONDON: In a first, astronomers have found a water-rich rocky planetary body outside our solar system with basic ingredients for a habitable planet, raising hope for presence of alien life in the universe.
Scientists believe the discovery of the remnants of a rocky world with huge amounts of water is the first time they have found these basic ingredients for life in one place outside the solar system.
A new study at the Universities of Warwick and Cambridge analyzed the dust and debris surrounding the white dwarf star GD 61, 170 light years away.
Using observations from Hubble Space Telescope and the large Keck telescope on Hawaii, scientists found an excess of oxygen — a chemical signature that indicates that the debris had once been part of a bigger body originally composed of 26% water by mass. By contrast, only approximately 0.023% of Earth’s mass is water.
The researchers suggest it is most likely that the water detected around the white dwarf GD 61 came from a minor planet at least 90 km in diameter but potentially much bigger, that once orbited the parent star before it became a white dwarf. In its former life, GD 61 was a star somewhat bigger than our Sun, and host to a planetary system, researchers said.
About 200 million years ago, GD 61 entered its death throes and became a white dwarf, yet, parts of its planetary system survived.
The water-rich minor planet was knocked out of its regular orbit and plunged into a very close orbit, where it was shredded by the star’s gravitational force. The researchers believe that destabilizing the orbit of the minor planet requires a so far unseen, much larger planet going around the white dwarf.
“At this stage in its existence, all that remains of this rocky body is simply dust and debris that has been pulled into the orbit of its dying parent star,” professor Boris Gansicke of the Department of Physics at the University of Warwick.
