'LHS 1140 b could well be our best bet to one day indirectly confirm liquid water on the surface of an alien world,' researcher Charles Cadieux said.
An exoplanet in the habitable Goldilocks Zone of its star is now suspected to have a liquid water ocean and an atmosphere.The planet, named LHS 1140 b, is about 1.7 times the size of Earth, and is situated around 48 light-years away.This distant world, first discovered in 2017, has now been found to be a rocky world like ours, but with 10 to 20 percent of its mass being made up by water, according to a new paper due to be published in the The Astrophysical Journal Letters this week .
They also found that the planet has an atmosphere, possibly containing a similar amount of nitrogen to our own planet. The presence of this atmosphere would enable the planet to sustain liquid water at the surface.'This is the first time we have ever seen a hint of an atmosphere on a habitable zone rocky or ice-rich exoplanet.
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