Charles Cadieux, a Ph.D. student at the Université de Montréal and member of the Institute for Research on Exoplanets, has announced the discovery of TOI-1452 b, an exoplanet orbiting one of two small stars in a binary system located in the Draco constellation about 100 light-years from Earth.
It appears to be covered in water. Not like Earth but more like some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, maybe 30% water (the earth is less than 1% water by mass).
And it appears that its mass is a bit too big, gravity would be too much to actually live on.
But finding water in a system is critical since this is required for human life and we need a lot of it. This is a huge discovery and may lead to having a target for interstellar travel. It could conceivably have life on it, worth exploring just for that reason (no way to tell this now…).
The research will be handed off to the James Webb telescope for further study.
I wanna go.
An extrasolar world covered in water?
