Water vapor has been discovered on a planet outside our solar system, Fox News reported.
Using a technique that could help scientists learn about many planets with water, like Earth, exist throughout the universe, astronomers from Penn State University detected water in the atmosphere of a planet as massive as Jupiter orbiting the nearby star Tau Bootis, Fox News reported.
The planet, Tau Boötes b, is considered a "hot Jupiter" because it is a massive gas giant that orbits close to its parent star. Tau Boötis b was one of the first alien planets ever identified by astronomers when it was discovered in 1996, Fox News reported. At 51-light-years away, it is one of the nearest known exoplanets to Earth.
"Planets like Tau Boötes b, which are as massive as Jupiter but much hotter, do not exist in our solar system. Our detection of water in the atmosphere of Tau Boötes b is important because it helps us understand how these exotic hot-Jupiter planets form and evolve," Chad Bender, research associate in the Penn State Department of Astronomy said in a statement.
Bender said the discovery also helps demonstrate the effectiveness of the new detection technique, which detects the infrared radiation in the atmospheres of these planets.
Scientists analyzed the atmosphere surrounding Tau Boötes b by looking at its "faint glow." Researchers said different types of molecules emit different wavelengths of light, resulting in signatures known as spectra that reveal their chemical identify.
"We now are applying our effective new infrared technique to several other non-transiting planets orbiting stars near the Sun," Bender said. "These planets are much closer to us than the nearest transiting planets, but largely have been ignored by astronomers because directly measuring their atmospheres with previously existing techniques was difficult or impossible."
With the new detection technique and more-powerful future telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope and the Thirty Meter Telescope, the astronomers expect to be able to examine the atmospheres of planets that are much cooler and more distant from their host stars, where liquid water is even more likely to exist.
