New research suggests that planets once assumed to be covered in massive global oceans may be more Earth-like than earlier models predicted, according to findings showing that water may be more likely to exist underground on many exoplanets rather than flooding their surfaces.
Many known exoplanets located near their stars have surfaces covered in magma oceans. In these environments, water dissolves into the molten silicate layer surrounding an iron core while carbon dioxide rises into the atmosphere.
Now, a research team led by Caroline Dorn, Professor for Exoplanets at ETH Zurich, in collaboration with Haiyang Luo and Jie Deng at Princeton University, has published a paper providing new insights into the unique role water plays in this process.
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