# Tag Info

38

Liquid water can't exist in a vacuum. If there is no pressure, then the boiling point will drop to the freezing point and so there will either be ice or water vapour. And if the world is "small" then its gravity won't hold on to any water vapour, and it will be lost to space. The Earth can have liquid water because its gravity is strong enough to ...

22

I feel it's a cheap answer but heavy Jupiters can get much denser than Earth because planets with Jupiter's mass stop adding size as they add more mass. A planet with Jupiter's size and 10-12 times Jupiter's mass would be over twice Earth's density. As far as Earth-like planets, there's a cool property of terrestrial planets, more mass means more tightly ...

18

Our own magnetic field is generated by convection currents in Earth's liquid outer core. A useful summary from Physics.org: Differences in temperature, pressure and composition within the outer core cause convection currents in the molten metal as cool, dense matter sinks whilst warm, less dense matter rises. This flow of liquid iron generates electric ...

15

Do celestial objects need to be big to have liquid water on their surfaces? Yes. In a nutshell: liquid surface water needs an atmosphere. To sustain an atmosphere, a planet must be sufficiently massive, therefore sufficiently large. The warmer a planet, the more mass it needs to sustain an atmosphere. A planet warm enough for liquid water must thus also ...

14

Yes, but they're not very good and they're amazing. The Wikipedia article for Pluto shows a low-resolution map of the surface, generated from Hubble images: And the Wikipedia article for Pluto's largest moon Charon shows a low-resolution map of the Pluto-facing side of Charon (not to scale): Larger image here. Only the Pluto-facing side is shown because ...

10

Super-Earths and Mini-Neptunes are the "in-between" types of exoplanets you're looking for. A sweeping generalization would put most in the range of $\sim1$-$10M_{\oplus}$ (Earth masses), with some outliers a bit above that. They may have significant quantities of hydrogen and helium in their atmospheres, as well as water, in liquid or vapor form. The latter ...

9

gerrit's answer has done an excellent job of showing that (1) there are a narrow set of temperatures and pressures where liquid water exists and (2) a planet has to be pretty big to have enough gravity to keep water in the atmosphere. However, I wanted to mention this: However, the conditions required for liquid water can be extended by mixing it with other ...

8

From the wikipedia page on Chthonian planet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chthonian_planet "Transit-timing variation measurements indicate for example that Kepler-52b, Kepler-52c and Kepler-57b have maximum-masses between 30 and 100 times the mass of Earth (although the actual masses could be much lower); with radii about 2 Earth radii, they might have ...

7

I've learned that the Earth's core is hot due to decay of radioactive elements. This is unproven, non-standard geophysics. There are several arguments against this. One is that all of the long-lived radioactive isotopes are isotopes of uranium (two isotopes, 235U and 238U), thorium (232Th), and potassium (40K). The problem: Uranium, thorium, and potassium ...

6

Okay, so that's a 130 mm newtonian with an f/5 focal ratio. Per the manufacturer's website, it comes with two eyepieces, 10 mm and 20 mm, giving 66x and 33x magnifications respectively. First off, make sure your scope is collimated. The procedure is described in their generic Telescope Maintenance document, and also more specifically in the Astromaster ...

5

The observational determination of the chemical abundances in exoplanets is in its infancy. In terms of terrestrial type planets, i.e. those of size less than a few Earth radii, the constraints are confined to comparing the measured densities (obtained from the masses and radii of transiting planets found by Kepler and CoRoT) with models of what planets with ...

5

It's a big question, but kind of a favorite subject of mine, thinking about exoplanets, so I can give a ballpark answer, and I invite anyone to give correction or give a more technical answer if they like. Ice(s) formation An ammonia-water ocean wouldn't be friendly towards ice formation because water ice would sink in the ammonia-water solution and ...

4

At the moment there is basically only one way. That is to associate the planetary-sized object with a cluster of stars or moving group of stars of known age. That's basically it. If the planetary-sized object really can't be associated with another object, then only limits can be placed on its age by comparing it's luminosity to theoretical planet cooling ...

4

This is not a characteristic of the solar system. It is a characteristic of the definitions of the names you used. Neptune and Uranus are the bodies you believe to be missing. In fact, with the mass of Earth at 6*10^24 kg, Uranus at 9*10^25 kg and Jupiter 2*10^27 kg, you'll notice that Uranus is only ~15 times the mass of Earth while Jupiter is ~20 times the ...

4

The currently-detected planets do not show a clear distinction between rocky and gaseous planets. While there seem to be somewhat two ensembles, the rocky planets of Earth-size and "super-earths" and the gaseous planets (Jupiter-size), there is a broad transition between them. The transition is roughly where we find Neptune and Uranus. Play around with ...

4

> Do other stars have similar gaseous-to-rocky ratios among their planets? For any given stellar system, are there typically as many gaseous planets as there are rocky planets? With the current instruments and methods we have, we can only access certain population of exoplanets. Terrestrial-mass exoplanets are quite hard to find hence we have more ...

4

The Kepler-20 system has planets with masses in the following order, going outwards from the star: Kepler 20b: $\approx 10 M_\oplus$ Kepler 20e: $\approx M_\oplus$ Kepler 20c: $\approx 16 M_\oplus$ Kepler 20f: $\approx 1.5 M_\oplus$ Kepler 20g: $\approx 20 M_\oplus$ Kepler 20d: $< 20 M_\oplus$ If Wikipedia is to be believed, Kepler 20b may be a ...

4

There are a number of reasons and you will see that my answer is subtly different to HDE226868's. OBA stars are less common than FGK stars, but they are much brighter and any magnitude limited sample would contain plenty. However they have not been observed as intensively and planets are much more difficult to find around them. And the latter has actually ...

3

No, it's an illusion. Probably the ancient one. Simple experiment you can do is, set grid on telescope, measure the angle subtended when moon is at horizon and when moon is atop. You will see angle subtended by moon is same, hence the size are same. It's merely an illusion. For more details: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_illusion

3

The transfer of heat would be insignificant. Consider the Earth, the core is as hot as the surface of the sun. Some of this heat does get transferred to the surface, but it is only 0.03% of the energy received from the sun. Rock is a good insulator, most of the heat is transferred by convection. The far side of a tidally locked planet would be very cold. It ...

3

I think the answer to your question lies with Jupiter, be it directly or indirectly, the gas giant is now believed to have had a large influence on the way the inner planets formed. Many planetary scientists believe that the reason we only have 4 small inner planets today and not any "super-Earth" sized ones is because of Jupiter, and how it interacted ...

3

The flattening of a planet is a function of both its spin rate and its structure. But for a series of planets of homologous structure the flattening depends on the spin rate. the faster it spins the greater the flattening (for spin rates typical of planets any way). So if a planet is spinning slowly it will display little polar flattening, similarly if it ...

3

You may have a hard time finding definitive answers to these questions. I'm after the same answers and hope this will contribute as a starting point to something more specific and comprehensive . Generally the abundance of elements appears to be closely related to their mass. In effect the heavier the element the more scarce it will be. This is due to the ...

2

From the article: "In fact, its age may be 4.36 billion years old." This is still older than the estimated age of the Late Heavy Bombardment, so it wouldn't affect that hypothesis much. In fact, it may actually help the hypothesis, as it means the Moon would have more of its interior molten (though probably not by much). It's suggested that the magma from ...

2

No known planet except Earth can be colonized by a human civilization. There are at least three serious issues: temperatures at around 300K, an atmosphere of appropirate pressure, and damaging cosmic radiation (low gravity is also a worry for long-term human presence). Minerals are less of a problem (and water can be synthesized). Mars and the Moon are close ...

2

The current ideas are that both terrestrial planets and giant planets start their formation in a similar manner. Dust settles towards the mid-plane of a predominantly gaseous disk, starts to stick together and eventually small (km-sized) planetesimals are formed. This process may be quicker in the outer parts of the solar systems where the gas is colder and ...

2

I'm inclined to say no (and footnote, I realize Wikipedia isn't a good source for scientific proof as it's not always right, but I'm using it more to demonstrate a point than than use it as an authoritative definition). Wikipedia: A terrestrial planet, telluric planet or rocky planet is a planet that is composed primarily of silicate rocks or ...

2

I vaguely remember my dad talking about this. Uranium and other heavy elements are dense. When the celestial body was molten (early in it's life) all the heavy elements sank to the core of the body. Now, with tectonics, the heavy elements are brought back up to the surface. This is why we can mine Uranium on Earth near the surface: the Uranium was brought ...

2

This is just an amusing addition to the existing answer. It turns out that a metallic hydrogen layer (which lets electrons move freely, and moving electrons means a magnetic field can form) is not enough to account for the size of Jupiter's magnetosphere. It's off by a factor of approximately 2. The rest of it is mostly thanks to Io. The wiki page will ...

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