The researchers offer a thesis of planet formation according to which watery planets should be more common than some scientists think: If planets’ water resources came from accretions of tiny carbon and ice particles, rather than icy asteroid hits, many would have lots of water, and maybe life.
A common assumption among exoplanet experts is that most planets got their water via a chance hit early on from an icy asteroid. But researchers from the GLOBE Institute at the University of Copenhagen offer an alternative scenario, based on the millimetre-sized particles of ice and carbon that orbit all the young stars in our Milky Way galaxy.
If masses of these particles are incorporated into a planet from its beginning, it isn’t a matter of chance whether the planet has water. It is a matter of chance if it loses water, which seems to have happened, for example, to Mars.
News, “Could the universe be swimming in watery planets?” at Mind Matters News
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