Water discovered in planet remnant

Collaborated research between the University Of Warwick and the University Of Cambridge has brought to light a solar system which may have had the potential to sustain life.

Any life that may or may not have existed would now have been destroyed by the apocalyptic collapse of the solar system.

Researchers have discovered water contained within an asteroid that was orbiting GD 61, a white dwarf star which would at one point have been the star of a complex solar system 170 light years away, but much like our own.

The water found in the debris orbiting GD 61 is supposed to have come from a minor planet. The planet, originally in orbit around the star, was knocked out of its orbit and shredded by the star’s gravitational pull. Estimated to be at least 90km in diameter, studies suggested that a larger planet, so far undiscovered, was responsible for this.

When a star destroys an asteroid, the elements from it remain in the star’s atmosphere as ‘pollution’ and show up in the spectrum of light that can be detected from the star.

The asteroid was found to contain 26 percent water by mass, as much as contained on Ceres, a dwarf planet in our own solar system.  By comparison, the earth’s mass consists of only 0.023 percent of surface water.

Although research has been carried out on twelve similar destroyed exoplanets, this is the first time water has been found. This is also the first time that the two essentials for sustenance of life have been found together: water and a rocky surface.

Boris Gänsicke, from the Department of Physics, and Jay Farihi, from the Institue of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge, have published a study in the journal Science: Evidence for Water in the Rocky Debris of a Disrupted Extrasolar Minor Planet.

The researchers used NASA’s Hubble telescope and telescopes from the W.M. Keck Observatory to collate their findings.

“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,” commented Prof Boris Gänsicke.

Dr. Farihi added: “The finding of water in a large asteroid means the building blocks of habitable planets existed – and maybe still exist – in the GD 61 system, and likely also around a substantial number of similar parent stars…

“These water-rich building blocks, and the terrestrial planets they build, may in fact be common – a system cannot create things as big as asteroids and avoid building planets, and GD 61 had the ingredients to deliver lots of water to their surfaces.

“Our results demonstrate that there was definitely potential for habitable planets in this exoplanetary system.”