Hubble telescope reveals exoplanet made of water

GJ 1214b, a planet some 40 light-years from Earth, is a water world. It’s almost entirely made of liquid, has an estimated temperature of 230C and is enshrouded by a steamy atmosphere.

“The high temperatures and high pressures would form exotic materials like hot ice or superfluid water: substances that are completely alien to our everyday experience,” explains Zachory Berta of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

It’s classified as a super-Earth, as the planet is about 2.7 times Earth’s diameter and weighs almost seven times as much. It orbits its star every 38 hours at a distance of just two million kilometres, resulting in those super-hot temperatures.

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